The New Criterion
It operates as a refuge for a civilizing element in short supply in contemporary America: honest criticism
- The Wall Street Journal Subscribe Now and get unlimiteв access
TheaterSeptember 2008 Campaign season by Brooke Allen On Of Thee I Sing at Bard Summerscape, and The Understudy & Broke-ology at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. In the final few months of a presidential campaign that has certainly been the most heated in recent memory, it’s rather surprising that no one has planned a Broadway revival of the great Gershwin musical Of Thee I Sing. Though it was written back in 1931 during the Herbert Hoover administration, the show retains an almost uncanny similarity to the farce-cum-extravaganza currently being played out in Washington and on the campaign trail. In fact there is only one real anachronism in the show: a running gag about the anonymity and irrelevance of the Vice President. (No doubt this was funny once, but Dick Cheney and Al Gore have exploded the ineffective-V.P. cliché forever.) Everything else is spot-on. The First Lady has to prove she’s a real woman by making delectable corn muffins—well, remember Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton’s chocolate-chip cookie bake-off? Candidate J ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 27 September 2008, on page 38 Copyright © 2008 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Campaign-season-3890
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
Subscriber login
 The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices Already a print subscriber? click for online access 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. by Brooke Allen On A Tale of Two Cities at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 13 at the Jacobs Theatre, Equus at the Broadhurst Theatre. by Brooke Allen On Hair at the Delacorte Theater, Noël Coward in Two Keys at the Berkshire Theater Festival, and Buffalo Gal at Primary Stages. by Brooke Allen On Gypsy at the St James Theatre, Boeing-Boeing at the Longacre Theater, and The New Century at Lincoln Center. New from The New Criterion: ‘Free speech in 
EventsJanuary 25 2009 TRAVEL EVENT: The New Criterion Cruise Webcasts
The Milt Rosenberg Show: Free Speech in an age of Jihad
Roger Kimball on liberalism's response to Islam
Encounter Books at 10, an interview with Roger Simon Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must be a new criterion subscriber to post a comment. {subscribe now}