[NEohioPAL] From the New York Times; straight shows down, musical theatre up

[Mark Cipra]

Not to revive our old (privately-conducted) "which approach to Shakespeare is best?" debate, but theater is theater.  It's there to stimulate the imagination, and even "The Little Mermaid" can do that.  Well, maybe not "The Little Mermaid", but at least "The Lion King".

 
Mark Cipra
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"Aristotle thought it was edifying to watch terrible things happen to noble people. Why this should be so, I do not know. But you've got to hand it to him for noticing the phenomenon." Craig Lucas




________________________________
From: Robert Hawkes <rhhawkes at gmail.com>
To: Christopher Fortunato <learnedhand at live.com>
Cc: neohiopal at listserve.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2008 10:57:46 PM
Subject: Re: [NEohioPAL] >From the New York Times; straight shows down, musical theatre up


Jeez, don't get me started. No disrespect to musical plays of actual honesty and substance, but this trend (a trend with a fraternal twin in the film-going population - ask John Ewing at the Cinémathèque) would seem to me merely a symptomatic eddy of the larger tidal shift, in the last 50-60 years, as pop culture moves from the juvenile periphery to the adult center of our culture as a whole. We all know that it's harder and harder to get folk to sit still at a live theatre performance, accustomed as they are to the rapid jolts of TV and garbage-y movies, and what tends to draw them in, if they do come, is...well, let's just leave it at Easy Access - which, let's be frank, is what most musicals provide.

I'll stop. 

Ho ho ho, everybody. Stay safe on New Year's Eve.

RHH
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