A florid history of the 1960s' best-known radical theater. Tytell ((English/Queens College; Ezra Pound, 1987, etc.) knows his subject matter well, although he often lacks the perspective to give a balanced picture of this innovative theatrical troupe and its quirky founders, painter-turned-actor/director Julian Beck and his wife, actress/director Judith Malina. The couple met in the late 1940s (a meeting Tytell calls ``cataclysmic'' for the thunderstruck 17-year-old Malina) and discovered that they shared a dream of establishing a ``poet's theatre.'' Existing on the peripheries of the avant-garde movement, the duo crossed paths with many seminal figures, from painters Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to composers John Cage and Alan Hovhaness, and writers Allen Ginsberg, James Agee (who was briefly involved with Malina), and Tennessee Williams. The cast of characters played a seemingly endless game of musical beds, and the head spins in reading Tytell's lengthy descriptions of everyone sleeping in various combinations with everyone else. The company's first success came in the late '50s with a realistic depiction of heroin addicts waiting for their supplier (The Connection), followed by a portrait of the regimented life of a Marine (The Brig). Beck, Malina, and their followers spent the mid-'60s as tax exiles in Europe, returning to the US in 1968 with their semi-improvised play, Paradise Now, featuring a famous ``group grope'' scene enacting sexual freedom in all its variety. The Living Theatre continued its peripatetic existence through the '70s and '80s, performing on the streets and in theaters from American college campuses to the slums of Brazil. Beck died of colon cancer in 1985, but the company continued to perform on New York's Lower East Side, although by then they were marginal to the life of the theater. Throughout, Tytell uses an acolyte's overheated language to uncritically celebrate a long-gone era in the arts. (Photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8021-1558-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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