Stage

...he died in Paris in 1977...

...The first act, set in 1929 in Tulchin, a small town in the Ukraine, introduces David Schwartz, a reluctant teen-age violinist, kept at his practice by his coarse and sometimes brutal father when he would prefer to be romping with the girls...

...My Big Land, which I saw at the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is played in Russian with simul- taneous translation...

...he Atlantic Theater Company is another young company presenting a Russian play, albeit an older one...

...Second Opinion is a welcome corrective to the secular bias [of bioethics], and long overdue...

...Mamet, who sees himself rescuing Chekhov from inadequate translators, has already done a version of The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vanya (both published by Grove...

...Directed by Tabakov in a set by Aleksandr Borovsky, it is a somewhat static play, made more so by the line of boxlike playing areas that allow the audience to see more than one action at a time but that trap the performers in too tight a stage space...

...9Nursing Home Medicine: A Gloomy Profession...

...Since the homeland emphasized in the play is one's village, one's neighborhood, one's street, it may have been that the central government (Union of...notwithstanding) found Galich's conception of the big land visible through the small inappropriate...

...GERALD WEALES New from the Park Ridge Center: ACTIVE EUTHANASIA, RELIGION, AND THE PUBLIC DEBATE A 124-page introduction to the emerging debate over active euthanasia, including the positions of major faith traditions...

...A check is enclosed (prepayment is required...

...Macy, the Atlantic is dedicated to Mamet's belief that performances should serve the playwright's vision and not a superimposition from a designer director...

...There is a subplot in which David dotes on the unworthy 'but upwardly mobile Tanya while two other women--rep- resentatives of all that is simplistically best in Soviet life--hopelessly love the unlovable boy wonder, thus allowing a thematic parallel to the father's devotion to his ungrateful son...

...The play was scheduled for production in 1957 and had already reached dress rehearsal, when the production was closed, the play banned...

...Seeing Three Sisters--hearing it, rather--I reacted as I had when [ read Vanya, surprised that a playwright who is a master of language in his own idiom should have produced so routine an adaptation...

...Perspectives and commentaries on the desirability of laws permitting active euthanasia...

...The play is Chekhov's Three Sisters, in Mamet's adaptation, directed by Macy...

...Religious Studies Review "A welcome initiative.., provocative and enlightening...

...It may not have been as exciting or as revelatory as Chekhov can be, but I have seen less acceptable Chekhov under grander auspices...

...Reflections and commentaries on the justifiability of euthanasia for patients who are terminally ill and who request to have their lives ended Should We Have a Public Policy...

...A thoughtful mix of significant contemporary issues, explained with such lucidity that it is readily accessible to anyone...

...In the last act, on a medical train in 1944, David is a dying officer who is visited by his dead father--killed when the invading Nazis destroyed the Jews of Tulchin...

...We next see him at the Moscow Conservatory in 1937, a tediously self-involved young man, already making a name for himself and appalled when his father arrives, full of enthusiasm and with a gift of Tulchin prunes, and embarrasses him with an intru- sion of the life he thinks he has escaped...

...Clair, Suite 450 .9 Chicago, IL .9 60611 228: Commonweal STAGE RUSSIAN LIVES 'MY BIG LAND' & 'THREE SISTERS' he Oleg Tabakov Moscow Theatre-Studio is currently touring the United States under the auspices of the Acting Company--which last year took a program of Tennessee Williams oneacters to Russia--in a production of Aleksandr Galich's My Big Land...

...There is a great deal of generalized chat in this scene, some of it related to the homeland theme...

...Shortly before I saw Three Sisters, I examined Mamet's version of Vanya alongside that of Ann Dunnigan, whose New American Library collection seems to me the best American Chekhov, and I could see no compelling reason for Mamet's version beyond his obvious and highly justified admiration for the Russian playwright...

...Clair, Suite 450 .9 Chicago, IL .9 60611 5 April 1991:229...

...Please send me more information about the Park Ridge Center...

...Medical Humanities Review "Handsomely designed, lavishly illustrated...

...Why you should get a Second Opinion (The Park Ridge Center's quarterly journal of health, faith, and ethics) "Second Opinionis increasingly regarded as one of the finest [journals] available...

...9Abortion: A Middle Ground...

...But the heart of the act is two monologues, one by the dead man, who describes what happened to him, and the other by the son...

...Clip on dotted line and mail Please send me more information about Second Opinion and the Park Ridge Center...

...But since 1957 was also the year of a new attempt at economic decentralization, such a reading may be a touch too ingenious...

...Although the play is divided into three acts, each set in a different period, it is performed without intermission, implying a dramatic build that is not really there...

...The production, which I also saw at the Annenberg, presented by the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays (taking lib- erties with its titular mission), was a serviceable one...

...It is good that cultural exchange gives American audiences a chance to see this young company, but a more complex, less dated vehicle might have given a better idea of its capabilities...

...Name Address City State ~p @ THE PARK RIDGE CENTER 676 N. St...

...It is difficult to under- stand at this distance what the authorities could have found dangerous in My Big Land in the year of the Sputnik, the year following Khrushchev's celebrated deconstruction of Stalin when the USSR was presumably on the edge of one, of its open phases...

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...It may have been nothing more than the art bureaucracy's distaste for Galich, as the program suggests, for the playwright went into exile shortly afterwards...

...Namo Address City State Zip @ THE PARK RIDGE CENTER 676 N. St...

...9 TheCongregation as a Place of Healing .9Religion: Friend or Foe of the Aging...

...The Cresset "Terrific...

...It is "a play about the discovery and mean: ing of homeland," Tabakov says in a program note...

...Hovering above the boxes is an abstract gathering of floral arrangements and music stands (the protagonist is a violinist) which, even suffused with light after the hero's death, never gains more than a decorative significance...

...Chicago Tribune Recent articles in Second Opinion: .9The Exclusion of Theology from Public Policy .9Organ Transplants: Are They Worth It...

...Crosscurrents "The perspective of faith is consistently represented...

...The latter tells how his unit arrived in Tulchin too late to save the Jews and how he was wounded as he sat in his old street realizing his attachment to the place and to the father whom he had insuf- ficiently appreciated...

...Clip on dotted line and mail [] Please send me copies of "Active Euthanasia, Religion, and the Public Debate" (cost: $10 for I copy, $9 each for 2-5 copies, $7 each for 6 or more...

...The mes- sage is not that you can't go home again, rather it is that you must...

...Some per- formances were more interesting that others--particularly Todd Weeks's insistently eager Tuzenbach--but for the most part it was a production that emphasized the ensemble--Chekhov's and the company's--and, as the Mamet doctrine says it should, served the playwright to the best of its abilities...

...The father is made up and played as a Jewish caricature until his monologue that imbues him with the great dignity that was presumably always there had his son had the loving eyes to see it...

...Sections include: Personal Narratives Four case studies A Historical Perspective Tracing the history of euthanasia, from classical antiquity to the present Questions and Answers Commonconcerns and questions in the public debate Views of the Major Faith Traditions A survey of attitudes toward euthanasia in 27 religious traditions Is Active Euthanasia Justifiable...

...Although there is some variation in word choices, there are no major differences between the two translations--no manipulation of scenes or characters for non-Chekhovian effect--and Dunnigan's lines seem to me generally more vigorous, more direct, less odd in locution...

...Formed in 1985 by former students of David Mamet and W.H...