From 2007:
Rostropovich was more than just a great musician, of course. He was one of a handful of well-known Russian artists who were willing to put their lives on the line to protest Soviet tyranny….
Talk is cheap, and modern-day America is full of artists who bloviate at endless and enervating length about public affairs. How many of them, I wonder, would be prepared to do what Rostropovich did? As I read of his passing last week, I looked out the window of my room at the full-size replica of the Mayflower docked across the street in Plymouth Harbor, and asked myself whether I had it in me to walk away from my comfortable life for the sake of freedom. I like to think I would, but I’ve never faced such a choice, and very likely never will.
Read the whole thing here.
Day 03 — your favorite action/adventure movie
Day 12 — your favorite animated movie
Day 23 — your favorite character from any movie
Unusually for a commercial musical, “War Paint” is not directly based on a pre-existing play or movie. I suspect that’s part of the problem, because it isn’t very dramatic. For openers, the plot of the show fails to pass the who-cares test: Neither Rubinstein nor Arden is portrayed in a sympathetic way, and since all they care about is getting rich, there’s no special reason to root for either one of them. It’s possible that “War Paint” might have worked better had one of the two women been turned into a secondary character, but they are given exactly equal time on stage (it almost feels as if Doug Wright had written the book in collaboration with his stars’ lawyers). The result is a musical that is structurally rigid, dramaturgically over-crowded and emotionally tepid.