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.
Jan 17, 2011 –
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.
The corruption of culture is the theme of this searing and wildly funny satire written by David Hirson in 1991 and, alas, ever more appropriate today. Mark Rylance is dazzling in the role of Valere, a gross, foppish, foolish street performer who threatens the high art of the theater troop directed by Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), a stand-in for Molière, who was a court playwright. It is 1654 in France, and The Princess (perfectly portrayed by Joanna Lumley), the patron of Elomire’s company, insists that he take on Valere, whom she decides is brilliant.
I can’t remember when I’ve seen a play as hokey and charming and full of fun as Brief Encounter. Okay, I take that back. It was The 39 Steps. But not surprising, it is also a spoof of an iconic British film, that one by Alfred Hitchcock. This one is by Noël Coward. If you want to have a very good time, go to this production. But notice the deeper meaning underneath it all.
The American Interest, Jan-Feb 2011 (online Dec 9, 2010)
Corporate secrecy, which involves hiding the identities of company owners from tax and other legal authorities, is itself no secret. It is well known that offshore banking centers such as Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Cayman Islands have for many years enabled fraudsters all over the world to carry out scams, launder illicit profits, stash stolen loot and hide money from tax authorities.
What most people do not know, however, is that there is a vast and growing American offshore. Foreign crooks prize states such as Nevada, Wyoming and especially Delaware for state laws that don‘t require them to list owners or even company officials when a new company is formed. Corporate interests and the Obama administration are blocking congressional efforts to change that.
Dec 6, 2010 – Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations Friday and used the occasion to attack WikiLeaks. I used the occasion to ask her a question: If WikiLeaks should be charged criminally for putting up this information, should The New York Times be charged criminally for doing the same thing?
Dec 4, 2010 – I was invited to CNBC’s Power Lunch to talk about a report by the IRS Inspector General that prisoners had received $112 million in tax refunds they shouldn’t have gotten. I surprised the interviewers by turning the question to tax cheating by those outside prison walls.
Nov 30, 2010 – I went on CTV, the Canadian News Network, to debate Martin Collicott, a former Canadian ambassador, over the WikiLeaks document release. Here’s a link to the video, done live yesterday, and then the text of what I said.
This engrossing play starts in 1934 Britain, when over a million men worked brutally hard ten-hour days in coal mines at standard survival wages. The back story is that some miners, who started in the pits at 11 and were deprived of education, had prodigious artistic talent. And probably other natural gifts as well, if only they’d had the chance to develop them. We get to see their paintings in this inventive production by director Max Robert that audiences will savor.
Imagine that you are hidden in a corner of Sigmund Freud’s cozy Hampstead study, with a wall of book shelves, a large window onto the garden and a leather chair next to the iconic couch. It’s 1939, King George speaks on the radio, sirens warn people to extinguish their lights to evade the bombs of the Luftwaffe. Freud (Martin Rayner) is being visited by a young Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis (Mark H. Dold) who had satirized him in a book. Their conversation is stimulating, spellbinding.
Maybe it’s because hypocrisy never goes out of style that George Bernard Shaw’s 1893 play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, seems so up-to-the-moment and not in the least dated. This delightful production by Doug Hughes, with the inimitable Cherry Jones as the madam/mother and a stand-out Sally Hawkins as her daughter, Vivie, charms, amuses and instructs. It is a very feminist play. And not to be missed.
Nov 7, 2010 –
[Update, by Dec it’s 60 countries and more than 460 signers.]
Journalists from every region of the world have joined together to support the whistle-blowing organization Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange who, they say, have provided an extraordinary resource for journalists around the world and made an outstanding contribution to transparency and accountability on the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.
I am one of the organizers of the campaign.
The journalists, many of whom are prominent investigative reporters, come from countries as diverse as Russia and Namibia, and Israel and Indonesia, plus many from European countries and North America. The journalists, who are linked through investigative journalism networks, decided to speak out publicly after watching a growing campaign of threats and unfair criticisms against Assange and Wikileaks.
Lillian’s Hellman’s account of the greed that tears apart a family is as powerful and compelling today as in 1939 when it opened on Broadway. It takes place at the turn of the last century, but was written at the end of the Depression. It’s about the advance and avarice of predatory capitalism. The little foxes, yapping and biting at each other’s heels, can be found on Wall Street and in corporate America.
Edward Albee is like a painter with a single overpowering theme. For him, it is the searing experience of being an adopted child of parents he hated. In Me Myself and I, a mother names her twin boys Otto (actually OTTO and otto), a way of divesting each of identity, and much later – when they are 28 – tells otto that he doesn’t exist. The play is bizarre, engaging, even amusing, especially when Mother, the blousy, intense, very talented Elizabeth Ashley is on stage.
Michael Frayn’s sprightly 1975 comical satire of newspaper life takes place in the library of a provincial paper. These were the days before computers, when librarians clipped the local papers and folded and filed the stories so reporters could get background on what they were writing. In spite of the title, Frayn’s newspaper library is anything but ordered, and filing by alphabet seems haphazard as well. But the ordered and disordered personalities that pass through among the piled high cabinets provide some comic pleasure as well as a gentle lesson about managing one’s life.
Sarah Ruhl’s inspired adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando is a poetic and vivid paeon to the art and importance of discovering oneself. It is also wildly clever and funny. Directed by Rebecca Taichman, it is yet another reason why the Classic Stage Company is so invaluable to New York theater. And why Ruhl is a playwright on the not-to-be-missed list.
Sept 27, 2010 –
China is the major international power blocking a global solution to the offshore bank and secrecy problem. It is doing so because of its own secrecy jurisdiction, Hong Kong, says José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission.
He said some countries hadn‘t been reacting positively to efforts to change the system , to establish a level playing field.
After the meeting, I asked him why the major financial powers hadn’t been able to achieve a solution. He said the problem was China, because of Hong Kong.
Sept 24, 2010 – Last Saturday, Barron’s ran my story in which IDT CEO Howard Jonas admitted for the first time a suspect deal with then Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide that involved sending payments due Haiti to a law firm in the Turks and Caicos. Jonas told me the company had gotten a lawyer’s ethics letter clearing the deal. But he wouldn’t provide it.
A day before the story was to run, Barron’s got a call from a lawyer of the firm representing IDT in a lawsuit by former IDT executive D. Michael Jewett, who says the company fired him for objecting to the offshore deal. He promised to provide the ethics letter. It was the end of day, Friday. The magazine noted that promise when it published the next day.
Days later, the lawyer called to say he couldn’t provide the letter because it was sealed. Hard to believe: there is no sealing order for the letter in the case docket.
Barron’s, Sept 20, 2010 –
Scoop summary: Howard Jonas, CEO of U.S. telecom IDT, in an interview with Lucy Komisar, acknowledges for the first time that then Haiti President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2003 met with an IDT official during discussions about a contract to pay Haiti Teleco for calls from U.S. customers. That contract included agreement for IDT to send payments to a shell company in the offshore Turks and Caicos Islands. Jonas said IDT got an ethics letter from a law firm clearing the deal, but the lawyer said in a memo filed with the court, published here for the first time, that he simply told IDT to do due diligence. IDT signed the contract the next day.
A former IDT official, who objected to the deal, was fired and is suing the company; trial is set for Nov 9th. The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Jonas’s revelations are likely to have a major impact in the trial and investigations.
