April 21, 2011 – Businessweek censored? A press release by the New York Attorney General censored? And by the organization that represents the nation’s school superintendents and principals!
Why would the American Association of School Administrators (AASA) ban letters from legislators and government officials as well as articles in several newspapers from a display table at its February National Conference on Education at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver? Thereby hangs a corporate tale.
The AASA didn’t ban the documents over the usual culture wars issues. It was to thwart distribution of training materials on how schools can avoid being ripped off by companies that provide school meals. The papers were stacked on a paid exhibit table that had been set up by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents food service workers. SEIU had also bought the right to run a workshop.
April 20, 2011 – Transit, a fascinating documentary by German filmmaker Angela Zumpe, seeks to understand the story of her 21-year-old brother Reinhard, who in 1968 immigrated from West to East Germany and eight months later – never contacting his family — jumped from a window to his death.
Benefactors begins in 1968, during an era when England was building controversial housing projects. It was written in 1984 by Michael Frayn, who two decades later authored Democracy, the powerful recreation of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s early 70s dealings with East Germany. In both cases, in overlapping eras, the personal becomes political, and there is a strong ideological message that expresses Frayn’s general concern about democracy, writ small and writ large.
Personal and family connections are fraught with psychological peril, disappointment, sometimes joy. It’s the stuff of many, even most, plays, films, novels. Bathsheba Doran weaves those strands into a complex web and network that connects and sometimes sustains lovers, friends, parents and children. It is a slim but appealing fabric, made richer by Sam Gold’s smooth, light touch.
Alfred Uhry’s charming, moving play is part of his Atlanta trilogy about Southern Jews in the middle decades of the last century. Through the conflict and then growing warmth between an elderly middle-class white woman and a middle-aged working-class black man, one gets a sense of how human contact can break or at least crack the barriers of color and class. The production is tour de force for Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones.
Sergey Ivanov, the Russian deputy prime minister, spoke at a Council on Foreign Relations lunch today. I asked if he thought the U.S. and Russia should get together to put a stop to offshore tax evasion. He smiled and agreed that the two countries need to deal with the international offshore system. That was something to consider in the future. And then he said, There are more than 1,000 banks in Russia. They are not banks but launderers.
This is an unlikely melodramatic potboiler about American slavery and a Jewish family in Richmond, Va., that turned its slaves into believers. It’s an unlikely premise in spite of historical documentation, but you no sooner get to the point of accepting one unlikely premise, than playwright Matthew Lopez throws you another. The play is full of action and mystery, secrets and surprises, but is somehow unsatisfying.
Jamie Jackson’s musical satire is the funniest political skit I’ve seen in years and is a highlight of This Ain’t No Tea Party! Jackson, who played one of the multi-characters in the demanding and hilarious The 39 Steps Off-Broadway last year, is a compleat actor. He was one of six performers at this political cabaret sponsored by Laughing Liberally, which promotes progressive politics.
This vibrant rock production about youthful rebellion in the face of a fraudulent society is in the tradition of Hair. But it’s not Hair with the memorable tunes that we still remember decade later; it’s more like MTV. Fast, often driving, and the kind of hard rock of the 28 Green Day tunes that doesn’t much distinguish it from anything else of that genre.
The genius of Oscar Wilde’s skewering of the British upper classes circa 1895 is that his satire is rather gentle, even affectionate, but his pointed steel neatly pierces the targets. In his deft and delightful The Importance of Being Earnest, he manages to get a few licks in at the literary establishment as well. All is done with enormous wit and panache, and not a trace of meanness, owing much to the flawless direction and acting of Brian Bedford.
There’s a touch of the Southern Gothic in many of Tennessee Williams’ plays, and it is usually seasoning in a pungent stew about human relationships, desires, and failings. But The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore is overwhelmed by Southern Gothic till it becomes a potboiler, a parody of a melodrama. This production is saved by the extraordinary performance of Olivia Dukakis, whose portrayal of the garish, bullying, self-centered Flora Goforth takes fire and pulls you in till you feel part of the conflagration.
This is a very New York play even if it takes place in Palm Springs, California. Playwright Jon Robin Baitz tells what happens when a New York writer who lives in Sag Harbor (where a lot of New York writers go in summer), journeys west to visit her extremely Republican parents. Extremely means they were friends of the Reagans.
Most of the characters in director August Pendleton’s brilliant staging of Chekhov’s Three Sisters live in hazes of self-delusion and despair lit by flashes of hope and bitter disappointment. That could represent the unhappiness of individuals, especially women, who have little ability to change lives without joy. It can also stand for the illusions of the burgers and small-time aristocrats who as a group also saw no future in the moribund society of pre-revolutionary Russia.
Feb 5, 2011 – The final edit of a film about the jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a film to which I contributed, has been stolen from the offices of German director Cyril Tuschi. The documentary, Khodorkovsky, is to have its world premier at the Berlin International Film Festival Feb. 14. I did reporting for the film and also was video-interviewed for it. The film tells Khodorkovsky’s story from his youth to the build-up of his oil empire and his political challenge to then President Vladimir Putin. Putin had told the oligarchs, men who had stolen the Russian patrimony to build their wealth, that he wouldn’t bother them as long as they stayed out of politics. Khodorkovsky, however, sought to influence the Duma election. He was arrested in 2003 and then tried and jailed for tax evasion.
Jan 24, 2011 – The lawsuit filed by a former employee against the Newark-based global telecom IDT is over. J. Michael Jewett, who was an IDT executive, claimed in 2004 that he was fired for opposing bribes to Haitian officials. Lawyers for both sides agreed to drop the complaint and counterclaims in an accord filed with the U.S. District Court in Newark on January 13th. This has not been reported before now.
IDT spokesman Bill Ulrey said, We have no comment…as usual. Thank you. Jewett’s attorney William Perniciaro also declined to discuss the matter. When both sides don‘t talk about an agreement to dismiss a case, that normally means a confidential settlement has been reached.
Rudolf Elmer appeared with WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange in London today and announced that he had given WikiLeaks two CDs with information about more than 2,000 prominent individuals and companies who evaded taxes or were involved in other criminal activities.
I used Elmer’s documents two years ago to show how the Julius Baer group adopted a plan in 1996 to utilize its Grand Cayman shell company Baer Select Management (on whose board he served) to help investors in Julius Baer Investment Management New York and JBIM London evade taxes.
