The Big Picture and the Closeup

Theater Reviews Page | Previous Theater Review | Next Theater Review Shepherdstown 2012 and the Rise of the Rolling Premiere Published in the Hopkins Review, Winter 2013, New Series 6.1   Take a healthy organism, deny it the environment in which it grows, and it may seek a new environment and new ways of propagating. Serious American theater […]

Babulus is right that he’s exercising his First Amendment rights, but he’s not contributing to the First Amendment’s purpose. Jointly he and friends like Catus (with whom I mostly agree on the substance) have turned the encounter of disparate speakers into a sparring match whose sole end is the spectacle it produces. No one is seeking to convince anyone else or to be convinced.

Around 1:30 on the Sunday morning, someone mishandled a cigarette near some combustible Christmas decorations. The ground floor was promptly engulfed in flames, which then quickly spread up the one stairway to the second floor. People on the second floor were trapped. Many jumped from the window, some were pushed from the window by frantic partygoers behind them …

But by the same token when you hear expressions of longing like I Get A Kick Out of You and All Through the Night, you cannot be blind to the fact that the lyricist knew a thing or two about the emotional side of love as well. He knew about being in love when the object of your affections doesn’t reciprocate.