Sign in  |  Register

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 unlimited access

Theater

May 1997

Stonewall Jackson slept here

by Mark Steyn

On Stonewall Jackson's House & Play On!

The London producer Thelma Holt was in New York a couple of weeks back, to look in on one of her plays but also to bring a briefcase full of postal voting forms in order to cajole the hordes of British actors treading the boards in Manhattan to participate in the UK general election. And on whose behalf was she going to all this trouble? “Who d’you think?” she retorted. “I wouldn’t be lugging the forms halfway round the world in order to get people to vote Tory.”

It’s perfectly reasonable for actors to be left-wing: most of them spend most of their time either unemployed or earning a pittance. At first, it’s not so bad: they have the same kind of seedy bedsits as their old school chums, who are training to be accountants, salesmen, lawyers, store managers. A few years on, the actor still has his seedy bedsit, while his pals have moved on to homes in the subu ...

This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchase

Subscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions)

Subscribe to TNC (Online only)

Purchase article credit and clip this article

If you already have an account login first

Mark Steyn’s most recent book is America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It (Regnery). His writing on politics, arts and culture can be read around the world. Mark is Senior North American Columnist of Britain’s Telegraph Group, and appears in The Daily Telegraph, the United Kingdom’s biggest-selling broadsheet daily, and The Sunday Telegraph; he is also North American Editor and Film Critic of The Spectator, the oldest continuously-published magazine in the English language. In Canada, he can be read in The National Post, the country’s new national newspaper. In the United States, Mark is theatre critic of The New Criterion and a columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times. His latest book, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, was published to critical acclaim in London and to somewhat sniffier reviews in New York.


more from this author

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 15 May 1997, on page 41

Copyright © 2009 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/stonewalljackson-steyn-3334
rate this article for your user profile

E-mail to friend


The New Criterion

By the author

The state despotic

by Mark Steyn

On our gradual slide into servitude.

Ol' man author

by Mark Steyn

On The Complete Lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein, edited by Amy Asch.

Mah-velous, dah-ling

by Mark Steyn

On The Letters of Noël Coward, edited by James Sexton.

You might also enjoy

Antique Romans & the Dane

by Kevin D. Williamson

On Jude Law in Hamlet, the Atlantic Theater Company's Two Unrelated Plays by David Mamet, Collaborative Stages's House of Yes, and The Retributionists by Daniel Goldfarb.

Luck of the Irish

by Kevin D. Williamson

On After Luke & When I Was God at the Irish Repertory Theater, New York, A Lifetime of Burning at e59e, New York & The Bacchae in Central Park.

Tarting up the bard

by Kevin D. Williamson

On A Midsummer Night's Dream at Shakespeare on the Sound and The Europeans at Atlantic Stage 2.

Most popular

view more >

download
first delivery

The New Criterion is now optimized for Mobile Devices

New from The New Criterion:
40 page special issue
on our conference

"Free speech in
an age of Jihad"

Events

November 24 2009

OPEN EVENT: Laura Jacobs reading


December 02 2009

Friends Event: The Swallow Anthology Reading


December 17 2009

Friends Event: New Criterion Holiday Party

Webcasts

New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 4
"The Criminalization of Making Money" by Lionel Shriver, Recorded 9/25/09


New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 3
"The State and the Threat to Democracy" by Jeremy Black and "The Paradox of the Intellectual and the Future of Capitalism" by Tim Congdon, Recorded on 9/25/2009


New Criterion-Social Affairs Unit Conference: Part 2
"Nice 'N' Easy: The Age of Micro Tyranny" by Mark Steyn, Recorded on 9/25/2009

Weblog