Concerning Levels of Horniness: Burlesque in Austin
Burlesque has a long history, and it is very much alive in Austin. As a comedic and exaggerated stage performance originating in Europe four centuries ago, it became popular in…
The Tragedy of Queen Caroline
Queen Caroline was custom-made for the finest caricaturists who ever lived. Her husband, King George IV, decided to charge her with adultery shortly after becoming king in January 1820. The…
He knows everything in the world about Milton!
My headline is taken from a novel by Virginia Woolf (pictured here). In Mrs Dalloway (1925), the character named in the title is “someone who can’t understand the pleasures of…
THE WORLD WAS AT STAKE: Churchill and De Gaulle
In the changing fortunes of fate, Charles de Gaulle “has become a unifying force in France. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, is now a figure of controversy again.” How…
Erma Bombeck: at wit’s end
How a Suburban Mom Transformed Boredom and Dread Written by Allison Engel and Margaret Engel, featuring Sarah Fleming Walker, the Austin Playhouse Associate Artistic Director, and central character who performed…
SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE: At the LBJ Library
It was not the usual interview at the LBJ library in Austin. Being questioned was not the Vice-President (one of those will be here in June) or a famous Admiral.…
THEY CANNOT ERASE US: Austin Gay Men’s Chorus
At a performance this weekend, the Austin Gay Men’s Chorus laid down a marker to all who oppose gay rights: They Cannot Erase Us! This concert is a bold choice,…
Flirt, fuck, is there so vast a difference?
That existential question, posed by John Updike in a letter to a woman who would become his wife, was written in 1974. It is, to put it bluntly, the animating…
La Bohème returns to Austin Opera
Photo: Timothy Myers, Music Director, Austin Opera Orchestra The old warhorse opera about a group of Bohemians in Paris in the 1830s has returned to Austin Opera. I reviewed its…
When the Place Remembers
THE HUMAN ATLAS DISPATCHES I am sitting in Place Clémenceau in Vence, France. To my right, the Mairie of Vence (Mayoral office) — that canary yellow building, the colour of…