The queer McCarter fairies, and today's articles from Maria

This morning's Town Topics has a nice review of McCarter Theater's current production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. We saw it last weekend, and it was fun.

Puck is played by Lucius Malfoy look-alike Guy Adkins, who can not only clamber up and down the abundant scaffolding in his Speedo-and-leather get-up, but can also sing. Puck's a hoot. The other fairies are played by similarly scantily-clad athletic young men. Lea DeLaria, in male drag, plays Bottom. The play-within-the-play of Pyramus and Thisbe slowed the show to a near-grinding halt but it provided yet more opportunity for drag.

The music was provided by GrooveLily, which reminds me of the hugely successful 1995 production of The Tempest. While Dan Moses Schreier and Carlos Valdez's percussion music for The Tempest was fabulous, GrooveLily was certainly enjoyable.

Others members of our group found this rendition of AM'sND too weird for their taste. I would have preferred more clothing and less drag, but I recommend it. This production will move to the Papermill Playhouse after it ends its McCarter run next month.


At the blogs
¡Gringo Unleashed! translates several articles from Spanish-language media on the protests.
Note to the protestors: the image of the American flag subsumed by another and turned upside down on American soil won't further your cause, but it sure makes your message very clear.

Dr. Sowell asks, Guests or gate crashers? (article via Maria).
(Prior post here)

Today's articles from Maria
Are they all mad?

It seemed you could tell any crazy lie to smear the US, and you'd be praised as a truth-teller. And so our own SBS ran a French documentary, The World According to Bush, arguing that Bush attacked Iraq just "for the benefit of Israel", because he was a "political whore" who was a puppet of Jews and Christian Zionists. Goebbels couldn't have put it better.

Blame Carter, not Bush

Carter brought about the instability by refusing to back his threatened show of force with action when Americans were taken hostage in Iran in 1979. By failing to take action, Carter failed the Middle East and more importantly he failed to faithfully fulfill his duties as president of the United States. Carter's betrayal of the late shah of Iran not only left a power vacuum that was filled by the Ayatollah Khomeini, but his betrayal and failure allowed for the rise of radical Islam, which culminated in Sept. 11, 2001.

Never forget: The Falling Man

THEY BEGAN JUMPING NOT LONG after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building's fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors—the top. For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the courage to jump himself or herself.

Feeling the Pain of the Falling Man of 9/11. Just this week, Bone fragments found near World Trade Center site

Mark Steyn ponders Facing down a culture where they talk like crazies

This was in last Sunday's NYT Jews in France Feel Sting as Anti-Semitism Surges Among Children of Immigrants

Ex-Mossad chief urges West to unite, warns of Muslims imposing ideology

An interesting article on Kosovo: An Independent Kosovo will explode — here

And the latest onInvention: Laser spark plugs

Plus today's video, The Taters. I wonder what Ron White would say.

(technorati tags Immigration, Terrorism, theater, 9/11)