Light fantastic
Subtitle: adventures in theatre
By: John Lahr.
Publisher: Dial Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 381
ISBN-13: 9780385315463; 9780385315500
Subjects: Entertainers -- Biography; Dramatists -- Biography; Composers -- Biography
Description: A collection of essays written by one of the drama critics for The New Yorker magazine, discussing comedians, playwrights, musicals, and productions in the international world of theatre.
Notes: Includes index.

Also issued online.

Table of contents: title: Comedians. Bill Hicks : the goat boy rises ; Joe Orton : a revenger's tragedy ; Max Wall : the monkey king of comedy ; Barry Humphries : playing possum ; Jackie Mason and Mort Sahl : working the room ; Peter Cook : bedazzled; title: Playwrights. Oscar Wilde : running Wilde ; Harold Pinter : night sweats ; Mikhail Bulgakov : the lone wolf and the Russian bear ; Tennessee Williams : fugitive mind ; Tony Kushner : beyond nelly ; Edward Albee : sons and mothers ; Sir Terence Rattigan : untutored hearts ; Lillian Hellman : hell on a short fuse ; Alan Bennett : madjesty ; Arthur Miller : dead souls ; Eugene O'Neill : selling the sizzle ; Arnold Wesker : hand to mouth ; Clifford Odets : waiting for Odets ; Neil Simon : shtick ball ; Brian Friel : sight unseen ; Tom Stoppard : blowing hot and cold; title: Musicals. George and Ira Gershwin : city slickers ; Rodgers and Hammerstein : carousel ; July Styne : Mr. Broadway ; George C. Wolfe : Jelly's last jam ; Savion Glover : tap messenger ; Lerner and Loewe : Shaw business ; Beauty and the beast : the shock of the neutral ; Stephen Sondheim : love in gloom ; The Who's Tommy : full tilt ; Isaac Bashevis Singer : bring back the clowns ; Kern and Hammerstein : Mississippi mud; title: Productions. Ingmar Bergman : gravity and grace ; Ariane Mnouchkine : caprice of the gods ; Ralph Fiennes : matinée idolatry ; Ingmar Bergman : the battle of the vanities ; Stephen Daldry : the virgin and the dynamo ; Peter Brook : losing the plot ; Anna Deavere Smith : under the skin ; Ingmar Bergman : winter songs.