[Ale]

Информация к размышлению. :о)
Что подчеркнуто - то подчеркнуто мной.

// журнал "TIME", 4 августа 2003 г.

America has long been a source of inspiration for the artists around the globe. But at the moment, when U.S. power is unmatched, the view of America from abroad seems suddenly darker and more caustic. A show at New York City' Whitney Museum, a series of short films about 9/11 by international filmmakers and a clutch of stage work overseas all through a harsh spotlight on the world's sole superpower. Time's critics report...

TRANSSEXUALS, GUYS IN DIAPERS - AND PRESIDENT WHO SUCKS HIS THUMB

Fat ladies and opera go together, but rarely has so much weight been thrown around onstage as in "Jerry Springer - the Opera". The musical version of the sleazoid TV talk show is filled with big people with big hair wailing about their big problems. A portly fellow with a luminous tenor confesses that he is cheating on his wife with a transsexual. A bridesgroom-to-be strips off his clothes to reveal a diaper fetish. A sluttish young woman battles with her mother over her aspiration to become a pole dancer. Running commentary is provided by a studio audience in the heavenly tones of a Bach choir; the crudest of the insults are spewed in the sweetest of sopranos. "I wish you died at birth!" a mother sings to her daughter. "I wish you died at birth!" the daughter warbles back. "At least", the host offers helpfully, "You agree on one thing."

Of all the new musicals that have burst onto the London stage in preparation for taking over the world, "Jerry Springer, the opera" may be the oddest. The show with faux-operatic music and raunchy lyrics by Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee, has been a sellout hit at the National Theatre since April and will transfer to the West End in October. Negotiations are under way for a Broadway production, which could arrive as early as the next spring. A movie deal is already cooking. Co-producer Jon Thoday predicts that within three years there "should be 15 productions playing around the world at any one time". And people used to complain about "Cats".

The cats at least brought a little glamour to their garbage pile. The America on display in the Jerry Springer opera is a place where white-trash yahoos willingly air their tawdiest laundry in public for a few minutes of TV fame. The show is just one example of a wave of new stage works overseas that put the US in a distinctly unflattering light. In Paris a "savagely satirical impromtu" called "George W. Bush or God's Sad Cowboy" has been drawing crowds since reopening in late May - after closing for two weeks when its writer-director, Attilio Maggiulli, was beaten up by a couple of pro-Bush thugs. (Talk about satirical impromtus). It portraits the US President as a spoiled 6-year-old boy who sucks his thumb and plays toy-soldiers with his pal Tony Blair. By the end of the play, Bush is trying to annex the entire Middle East as the 51th state. "Not bad", he boasts, "for the biggest idiot in America".

Across the Channel, where our allies are supposed to be, the satire of Bush is only a shade less vicious. The title character of "The Madness of George Dubya", a comedy in its sixth month on the west End, is another childish dimwit, who wears red cowboy pajamas and mangles the names of his enemies ("Saddama bin Laden"). Creator Justin Butcher says the play grew out of his outrage at the way Britain was sleepwalking into war at the behest of the Administration in Washington. Unfortunately, the topical jokes soon give way to a long, obsessively detailed parody of Dr. Strangelove, with a mad general ordering a nuclear strike against the Arab world. (...)

Jaundiced views of the US are a proved crowd-pleaser in London. Michael Moore, the insurrectionist documentarian, got booed off the Oscar stage for critisizing Bush's foreign policy, but in London late this year, his one-man show - with bits like a nightly "Stump the Yank" quiz - was a smash hit. Even the American plays that are increasingly shoving aside Shakespeare and Stoppard on the West End (often with big-name US stars in the cast) seem to be reveling in the worst of the US. (...)

By Richard Zoglin