Scene4 Magazine | the readers blog

Brilliant article! Written with a razor-sharp pen! I would add another "deliciously ironic moment": Wouldn't it be a delight to witness a genderless death as well?

Vic Thurman

read Michael Bettencourt's column

Here's to old hippies, old love and fresh tamales! Feldman's cartoons are sick, subtle and just funny, funny, funny. They give Scene4 just the right balance amidst the high-flying dance and opera and theatre. Carry on!

Mel Werner

read Elliot Feldman's comics

Oi Andréa, realmente a realidade dos bailarinos brasileiros é muito cruel. A comparação que eu faço às pessoas que perguntam como é o trabalho para o bailarino clássico no Brasil é a seguinte: -Imaginem um médico que estuda 6 anos para se formar, e só há um hospital onde pode trabalhar! Além disso esse hospital tem 50 cargos, os quais só ficam disponíveis quando cada um desses médicos que estão contratados se aposente aos 65 anos!!!! Você já imaginou a quantidade de médicos que se formam por ano? E a quantidade que ficaria sem trabalho? Pois é exatamente assim que acontece com os bailarinos no Brasil. Por isso a gente deixa o nosso país, prá poder trabalhar naquilo a gente estudou, geralmente mais que esses 6 anos que um médico precisa prá ganhar o seu diploma. Também gostaria de comentar que há muitos brasileiros que saíram do Brasil, de todos estados e para muitos países. E que o Ballet não está só na Europa e nos EUA, há muitos brasileiros na Argentina, Chile, Panamá, México, Paraguay, Uruguay. Um abraço

Michele Bittencourt
Ballet da Provincia de Salta-AR

I always loved his music. Latin jazz as good as there ever was and the article caught that thing that made Manfredo's music so rich--that classical ride underneath. It's so sad that he passed when he did, but such a joy that his music is still alive and real. I hope somebody will do a commemorative album and pick the high points of his career. Maybe there's some film available. He was a joy to listen to and a joy to watch.

Bobby Friedkin

read Arthur Meiselman's article

Underwhelming? You're more than kind Mr. Moore. They should tie rusty cans to the tail of Tony Gilroy and put dunce caps on Clive Owen and Julia r-r-Roberts and drag them through Hollywood on a very sunny day. You should get a G. Globe or something golden for even bothering to sit through and review this waste of time and money. Is there a word like "nonwhelming?"

C. Gerrif

read Miles David Moore's review

I appreciate Ms. Stendhal's keen powers of observation in this well-written article. I have seen the performance of Lucia and am amazed at how well Ms. Stendhal describes the beauty of this production. I have not see the Rene Fleming performance, but I am sure now that I do not ever need to!

Larissa Chernin

read Renate Stendhal's article

That's a hot list you got there Les. And very funny. But you know, those performers aren't very different from other folks. Look at the politicians and the CEOs. They do the same thing. I guess what happens when you get to certain place with power and money you get what you want and go a lttle crazy. Then it shows in your work and with musicians it shows in their music or what's left of it. The U.S. is the land of plenty but maybe not for long.

Jamie Perjtin

read Les Marcott's column

San Francisco Ballet is now one of the best, if not the best, dance company in the country and your review shows why. Great review, so well written and full of many insights. The photos are divine. Thanks for all that.

Pimi Bell

read Catherine Conway Honig's review

I'm frankly not a Wagner fan except for Tristan, which an early beau played and played for me when I was 15. However, because I have a Polish-Canadian friend in Toronto who is a Wagner nut and edits a Wagner mag, I stolidly began to read-- liked what Karren said very much and read the whole thing! I will also forward him the site.

Elisavietta Ritchie

read Karren Alenier's review

Yesterday I saw a performance of "Carmina Burana" and this morning I read your article. All wonderful fodder for my tiny brain that is trying to add a little more culture to its life (my next amble being an attendance this week at an outdoor opera simulcast). Brilliant article.

Irene Hendrick

read Renate Stendhal's article

Thank you Ned for that article -- right on! And thanks for mentioning a new theater in Rochester I hadn't heard about as yet. I will definitely be checking it out.

Joy Bennett

read Ned Bobkoff's article

I too fell in love with Peter Grimes a long time basically because I've always worshipped Britten's music and this opera is so incandescent. Thanks for a beautiful look at a beautiful production.

Amy Sachs

read Karren Alenier's article

Excellent review! Michael Sheen is a better David Frost than David Frost! Though I think Frank Langella does a marvelous job and is a wonderful actor, he doesn't somehow quite get the physicality, the quirky way that Nixon moved as Anthony Hopkins did in his film. I missed that quality.

Terry Braitough

read Miles David Moore's review

How Marvelous! Had no knowledge of this work, and it is an enthralling discovery.

Grace Cavalieri

read Karren Alenier's column

Ned Bobkoff has the rare quality of writing very much as he speaks. His is such a natural, easy-reading style, almost ingenuous. Ned's review of EDGE, the play about Sylvia Plath, makes me wish the production would come to Portland, Oregon where we have some good theater, but not enough experimental theater. Well done, Ned!

Gordon Magill

read Ned Bobkoff's article

Kathi Wolfe's column on Yogi Berra presents the delightful spectacle of one American original paying tribute to another. In a perfect world, Kathi would be as famous as Yogi. But alas, in Yogi's words, "Even if this were a perfect world, it wouldn't be."

Miles David Moore

read Kathi Wolfe's column

Bobkoff, groping for the right handle into Plath's life and suicide, engages in a piercing conversation with Ms Plath: reality is not at all the "nebulous" thing she is quoted as saying. For Bobkoff, it is the piercing bullet, the lung-clutching gasp, that gives the truth to her life, and his words. What a powerful statement he gives, powerful and arrow-straight to the heart. Thanks, Ned, for this; it will live for a long time.

Richard Zaner

read Ned Bobkoff's article

Yogi Berra isn't the usual poet, but you know what, his words stick in your mind. As a New Yorker, I claim him, and I'm delighted to see him celebrated by Kathi Wolfe.

Martha Gotwals

read Kathi Wolfe's column

Trying to get inside another's poet's pain is probably one of the hardest and most courageous acts a reader can perform, especially when the poet has prevented you from ever learning whether you've grasped the meaning of the pain that caused the stuffing of rags into the windows......the sweet gas and killing sleep that Sylvia Path finally found. Mr. Bobkoff took his conversation with the dead poet to a new depth, when he tried to learn the meaning of it through a playwright's efforts. His own sensitivity to the reasons behind the suicide of a beautiful and gifted person seems heightened by what he has probably gone through in living with his own conversation with his brother's suicide.
The interplay of Ned's conversation with Sylvia Plath, his own family pain and what he learned through the action of an actress finishing out the puzzle of Plath's enormous reluctance to live out her story is told with great sensitivity. What a shame Ted Hughes didn't take the time to do more than profit from the poetry of a life lived too briefly, and too publicly.

June Zaner

read Ned Bobkoff's article

As you know, the 20th anniversary edition of Andrea's Intercourse was recently published. It's still a vital and devastating work. So thank you for "revisiting" Andrea's legacy and reminding us of the poetical-political side of her writing in First Love. The memory of her and the on-going impact of her life's work is triumphant.

Letty Becker Adler

read Arthur Meiselman's article

Beautifuly written response to the production, both informative and evocative.

Frank Kuhn

read Ned Bobkoff's article

Kathi Wolfe, how do I love thee. You hit it out of the park with this one!

Grace Cavalieri

read Kathi Wolfe's column

Ms Yasovant's excellent profile of this ancient wonder tells us that the long and rich history of Thailand will carry its culture through the self-destructive turmoil that has plagued it in recent years. Art like this survives as petty politicians and their greed turn to dust. There's a lesson in this treasure for people everywhere.

Deborah Coursten

read Janine Yasovant's article

Well Maestro. you've caught me again. To say you have a wry sense of humour is an egregious understatement. I didn't particularly like "Children of Men." It was too monochromatic for my taste, painted in one color-what you call "doom." Between "babbling" and "doom," I tried to find a wee bit of hope. But before futility, there you go, slipping it in when I'm not looking like a drop of lime in a dry, dry, dry martini, clever, selfish writer that you are.

Hizonner

read Arthur Meiselman's column

Indeed the play is the thing and Nathan is the great purveyor of what remains good in theatre. Many, many thanks.

Burton Rubens

read Nathan Thomas' column

Terrific review but white print/black background is much to difficult to read for an entire article. An occasional white on black "punch" field may be fine, an entire article too tedious to read. Too bad, it was a welcome review.

Barbara Witte

read Renate Stendhal's article

Many thanks for your compliments. You've touched a long-discussed issue in photography by highlighting the existence of the subject versus its new representation by the photographer. The phrasing of your comment hints to the problem arising from the fact that the camera simply records what is in front of it, and if all pre-exists and is simply mirrored - is it really re-presented and contributed to by the photographer? You said yes and I naturally agree, though it is true that in stage photography much more of the image pre-exists than in other fields of photography. The photo you asked about is from the play 4.48 Psychosis, and photographed here is the Polish theatre company 'TR Warszawa', directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, as they performed in the 2008 Edinburgh Festival, Scotland.

Kfir Bolotin

view Kfir Bolotin's images

Thank you Scene4 and Griselda Steiner for reminding me of the power and beauty of cinema as well as the power and beauty of Costa-Gravas' filmmaking. "Z" was and is a shattering portrayal of government cruelty and injustice. It also was almost prophetic in what could have happened in the United States as recently as one year ago.

George Gee

read Griselda Steiner's article

This display of the photography of Kfir Bolotin is beautiful. I realize that the lighting and poses are already present on stage, but the eye of the photographer is amazing especially the composition of the second photograph called, "psychosis-cr." I would really like to know what theatre production it comes from.

Shelley Hazig

view Kfir Bolotin's images

Please be aware kind readers that Herbie Howell was actually found by one of our readers. It turns out he has been hiding in plain sight in his home town of Augusta, Georgia all these years. And while he long ago gave up on a musical career, from what I understand has lived a rewarding and happy life. This news was posted here last year (click to read) but since there is such a tremendous interest in his story I deem it worthy to post again.

Les Marcott

read Les Marcott's original article

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