reviews

• 
• 2/24/20
  

  New, Experimental West Side Story Is an Experiment that Goes Awry

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The play has lost its focus and sense of history.

• 
• 2/20/20
  

  A Tale of the Great Migration

  by Bruce Chadwick

  Blues for an Alabama Sky, a new play by Pearl Cleage, tells the story of a handful of those people. It is a deep, rich play in which their stories are carried out against the cultural backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance.

• 
• 2/5/20
  

  Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice are Back, and the Sexual Revolution with Them

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The late 1960s was the heyday of America’s sexual revolution and nowhere was it bigger than in California.

• 
• 1/28/20
  

  There’s Nothing Like a Good Ghost Story from the Past

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The terrifying and wondrous Woman in Black is an international hit. It's a play staged in 2020 that was written in 1987 about an event that took place in 1927.

• 
• 1/26/20
  

  How Neville Chamberlin Misread Hitler and Allowed the Third Reich to Threaten the World Order

  by Jeff Roquen

  In the new and magisterial study Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War, Tim Bouverie incisively reconstructs the ideological landscape of post-WWI Britain to explain how Chamberlain and other politicians and pundits misread Hitler and ultimately allowed the Third Reich to threaten the entire world order.

• 
• 1/26/20
  

  The Film “1917” and the Allegory of the Wooden-Headed

  by James Ottavio Castagnera

  Viewed with one eye on this current context, “1917” can surmount its surface characterization as an exciting “war movie” to become an allegory.

• 
• 1/21/20
  

  1917: The War Movie at Its Very Best

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The movie is a story within a story – the two men within the greater war

• 
• 1/19/20
  

  A Play About Historical Reenactors Grapples With American Identity

  by Bruce Chadwick

  Talene Monahon’s new play, How to Load a Musket, takes a deep, hard look at the re-enactors of two wars, the American Revolution and the Civil War.

• 
• SOURCE: BBC History Extra
  1/14/20
  

  “A staggering tour de force – but an opportunity missed”: a historian’s review of the film 1917

  by Jeremy Banning

  How does 1917 deal with the realities of war and what does it show about the real events of 1917 – the retreat by German forces and life in the trenches? 

• 
• 1/14/20
  

  Depression Era Tenor Hits All the High Notes

  by Bruce Chadwick

  It is 1934, at the height of the Depression, and an opera company in Cleveland is trying to make enough money to stay in business.

• 
• 1/12/20
  

  A New History of American Liberalism

  by Bruce W. Dearstyne

  Liberals looking for an enlightening but sobering account of their movement's history should read James Traub. 

• 
• 1/5/20
  

  Somewhere Over Their Rainbows - Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland

  by Bruce Chadwick

  In the late 1930s and 1940s, Deanna and Judy, just teenagers, were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Deanna was not only a superb actress, but as a singer had the voice of an angel.

• 
• 1/5/20
  

  Little Women are Bigger Than Ever

  by Bruce Chadwick

  Director Gerwig, who also wrote the screenplay, has  made this a very modern look at life in the 1860s.

• 
• 12/10/19
  

  A Concise History of Diets through Life and a Lot of Show Biz Spice

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The play is warm and loving. It is a memoir of sorts with her as the center. It is not a drama or high comedy or sprawling spectacle, either, but it is good.

• 
• 11/26/19
  

  Cinderella, Whose History Goes Back to the First Century, Is Still a Delight, Glass Slippers and All

  by Bruce Chadwick

  The tale seemed to have first appeared in Egypt around 100 A.D. That story featured a lost Greek girl who stumbled into a party hosted by the Pharaoh.

• 
• 11/25/19
  

  A Marvelous Christmas Carol

  by Bruce Chadwick

  This new A Christmas Carol, based on Charles Dickens’ novel, has a different look to it, a different musical score, a different Scrooge and different ghosts. But it is the same heart-warming story. 

• 
• 11/21/19
  

  England’s Richard III as Murderous, Royal Thug

  by Bruce Chadwick

  William Shakespeare’s bone-chilling play Richard III portrays England’s deformed monarch as a murderous thug, one of the great villains of world history.

• 
• 11/12/19
  

  The Brave Jewish D’Artagnan Who Fenced for Germany in the 1936 Olympics

  by Bruce Chadwick

  One of the reasons Games resonates today is that ever since those long-ago Olympics in 1936 Jews have faced constant discrimination and persecution, unfairly so, and face it today, too.

• 
• 11/12/19
  

  The Battle of Midway Movie is Mostly Terrific

  by Bruce Chadwick

  Despite its drawbacks, Midway is a rip-roaring military saga and a testament to the men who won it.

• 
• 11/10/19
  

  Americans Were Too Stodgy for Art Nouveau

  by Diana Muir Appelbaum

  Art nouveau was the modern art movement that America almost entirely missed.  Not only is it absent from our streets, it is largely missing from our museums, a void that a traveling exhibit, Designing the New: Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style, now at the Walters Museum in Baltimore, is seeking to repair.