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TheaterFebruary 2008 Never the Twain by Brooke Allen On the revival of Mark Twain's Is He Dead?, the Steppenwolf production of August: Osage County, and the return to Broadway of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming forty years after its debut. One of the most potentially exciting events of the theatrical season was the premiere of Mark Twains lost comedy Is He Dead? After all, how often does a full-length work by an artist of Twains caliber come to light after more than a century? The manuscript of this unproduced piece was discovered in 2002 among the Mark Twain papers at U.C. Berkeley by a literary scholar, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, who arranged for the manuscript to be published and suggested to the producer Bob Boyett that the play, a lightweight cross-dressing farce, would do well on Broadway. Doctored up by the successful commercial playwright David Ives, it opened on December 9, 108 years after it was written, to all but rapturous reviews. I set off to the theater convinced that it was going to be a perfect evening. How could the great Twain, the adroit Ives, and the brilliant director Michael Blakemore go wrong? ... You need to login to view the full text of this article. This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 26 February 2008, on page 39 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/never-the-twain-3760
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by Brooke Allen
On Rock 'n' Roll at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, The Farnsworth Invention at the Music Box Theatre, Pumpgirl at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and Speech & Debate at the Roundabout Theater.
by Brooke Allen
On the Wooster Group's Hamlet, the Manhattan Theater Club's The Receptionist, and Things We Want at the New Group.
by Brooke Allen
On Iphegenia 2.0 at the Signature Theater, The Misanthrope at New York Theater Workshop, The Dining Room at the Keen Company, Dividing the Estate at Primary Stages, and The Seagull at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
by Brooke Allen
On In the Heights at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, Almost an Evening at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker Street, Parlour Song at the Atlantic Theater, and The Four of Us at Manhattan Theatre Club.
by Brooke Allen
On Conversations in Tusculum at the Public Theater, The Cherry Orchard Sequel at LaMaMa ETC., Gray Area at the Barrow Group, and Next to Normal at the Second Stage Theater.
by Brooke Allen
On Jerry Springer: The Opera at Carnegie Hall, The Lifeblood at the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, New Jerusalem at the Classic Stage Company, and Two Thousand Years at the New Group.
June 04 2008
OPEN EVENT: 2008 Bradley Symposium: Encounter at 10
October 22 2008
GALA EVENT: The New Criterion Benefit Art Auction
January 25 2009
TRAVEL EVENT: The New Criterion Cruise
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