Hapgood (coauthor, Monte Cassino, 1984, etc.) indulges his love of theater by dogging the steps of Shepard Sobel, artistic director of Manhattan's Pearl Theatre, during the company's 1991-92 season. Founded in 1984 and currently ensconced in a 72-seat theater in the way-Off-Broadway Chelsea district, the Pearl cleaves to a kind of college-theater idealism, dedicated to sustaining a small resident company of actors (paid $180 a week) and focusing on the classics (``We try to take the audience to the playwright, not the playwright to the twentieth century,'' says Sobel). So the 1991-92 season kicks off with Moliäre's Tartuffe, followed by such box- office inflammables as Euripedes' The Trojan Women and Ibsen's Ghosts—clearly, it will be no sleigh ride meeting the $380,000 budget. To make matters worse, the Pearl's chief fund-raiser dies of AIDS, and artistic problems arise during rehearsals of Tartuffe, particularly with two actors who don't get along with Sobel. The author interviews everyone connected with the show, including Sobel's wife, Joanne Camp, who plays Elmire in Tartuffe, not to mention leads in many other Pearl productions—a fact that produces considerable enmity between her and other female company members. Along the way, Hapgood is surprised to find how intelligent the actors are...and how noble, what with their meager bag lunches. As it turns out, the season yields mixed reviews from the critics (who in turn get drubbed here) and comes in slightly under budget. Only theatrical novices and wannabes will be enlightened by Hapgood's take on life as it really is for theatrical professionals. What's more, the author has stars in his eyes, so none of the significant questions are asked—above all, what purpose does the Pearl really serve? (Sixteen pages of photographs- -not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 2, 1993
ISBN: 0-679-41165-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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