Word: sharp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...writers are more comfortable with them too. Carvey's Bush impersonation galvanized the troupe into some sharp political satire on the '88 campaign. In one inspired sketch during the Iran-contra affair, President Reagan (ah, that's Phil Hartman) puts on his familiar bumbling act in public, then turns into a whipcracking boss in private, directing every detail of the covert operation, down to computing interest on the money stored in Swiss bank accounts. The show's movie parodies have also had some shrewd twists: Carvey, for example, playing Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant in Rain Man -- who turns...
That music is admirably presented by Kent Nagano, 37, a long-maned Californian who has guest-conducted widely and won a solid reputation for his performances of works by such contemporaries as Olivier Messiaen and Steve Reich. His reading of Mahagonny is sharp, clear and briskly energetic (even a bit too much so in the lovely "cranes duet"). Gary Bachlund brings an appropriate touch of Nelson Eddy to the role of the doomed hero, though Anna Steiger (daughter of Rod) plays Jenny with a less happy touch of Jeanette MacDonald. As Lotte Lenya taught a whole generation of admirers, Weill...
...seems willing to acknowledge. Better pay and treatment from the growers might improve the cutters' lot, but nothing will ameliorate the reality of harvesting cane by hand. It is boring, backbreaking work, carried out in oppressive heat, surrounded by the dangers of poisonous snakes, fire ants and whirling, razor-sharp scythes. Some of those who suffer these miseries take pride in their work. A man from St. Lucia tells Wilkinson, "Cutting the cane in itself is also a skillful task, you must be skillful at it. When you cutting the cane you must have a free mind...
...here the disagreement over the means and ends of a pluralist community comes to a sharp focus. Like the battle between the cultural right and left, with the literary or historical canon somehow held ransom between the two, the question over minority hiring seems to revolve around the perceived "lowering of standards" needed to diversify the faculty. Just who sets--and who judges--the standards of course is the most difficult question of all to answer. In a pluralist society, what are the certainties...
...here the disagreement over the means and ends of a pluralist community comes to a sharp focus. Like the battle between the cultural right and left, with the literary or historical canon somehow held ransom between the two, the question over minority hiring seems to revolve around the perceived "lowering of standards" needed to diversify the faculty. Just who sets--and who judges--the standards of course is the most difficult question of all to answer. In a pluralist society, what are the certainties...