Word: act
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...from a baron (M. Daniel Hughes '01) down to a girl of the streets (Jessica B. Kirschner '01). All of them have unique difficulties so that no single one predominates. Peppel (Jared M. Greene '03), the coolly effective driving force of the play, drops out entirely after the third act. None talk about where they come from or where they are going; any attempts to reconstruct a past are shouted down as lies. These people simply exist in the inn, and their incessant friction attempts to find out whether an indolence forced upon them by an unjust society can have...
...Only one character manages to make sense of the suffering, a pilgrim named Luka, brilliantly played by Kieran Fitzgerald '03, who drifts into the inn in the first act and out before the fourth. Luka preaches a doctrine of benevolent suffering in the face of rampant injustice. Luka guides some of the drifters to dream of a better life in a distant future and of helping people in the present instead of drowning in cold, hard realities. Fitzgerald's Luka is gentle and his good humor is radiant. Even with a shock of blond hair he cuts a better wizened...
...With Luka and Peppel out of the picture, the fourth act suffers from lack of direction. This was partly Gorky's intention. Satin (Nick Meunier '02) picks up the slack by translating some of Luka's wisdom into a sardonic wit more accessible to many of the drifters. The cast, however, has a bit too much fun joyriding, which takes away from the impact of the pointed suicide...
...Florida's final tally comes down to 2,000 absentee ballots cast overseas. In the 10 days we spend waiting for the ballots to arrive and be counted, Bush and Gore decide to forgo this silly election and join together in a coalition called "The Demopublicans." Their first act as president is to deport Ralph Nader to Greenland. Hey, he asked...
...lifetime. (I for one was surprised to learn there are times in the upper Great Plains when it doesn't snow.) MSNBC supplemented footage of Fred Rogers going to the polls with an update on rain in St. Louis. Even the Weather Channel itself has gotten in the act, peppering its broadcast with reports on battleground-state weather, spiced with gripping footage of cars driving through the rain to polling places...