In the well-known Greek creation myth, the Titan Cronus desperately seeks to prevent the prophecy that one of his offspring will overthrow him, as he did to his own father, Uranus. Cronus’ mighty power and desperate attempts to avoid his fate prove useless, and soon his enraged son, Zeus, appears to wage a climactic battle for the throne of the world.  [Read more...]

What would a religion which celebrated lust, music, dancing, and the drinking of wine be like? Hah! Need I even ask! The party would last until we were asked to leave the Eurozone, I suppose. Still – it would be hard to go. [Read more...]

If you think furs, Fabergé eggs, ballet when you think about 20th century Russia, Les Justes is here to remind you that for every lithographed Russian noblewoman traipsing around St. Petersburg in the latest Parisian fashions, there were hundreds of thousands of unseen serfs living on moss and wild roots in the countryside. For most Russians, life was spent in slums, sustenance farms, and purgatory prisons.  [Read more...]

No hystery mere: writer/director Tom Mallan’s purpose is to take the most powerful story in royal English history – Henry of Monmouth’s growth from a frivolous delinquent into the greatest of Kings – as written by the greatest of playwrights, and turn it inside out. In Mallan’s version, the transformance of Hal the Wastrel into King Henry V was a tragedy, not a heroic romance, and he tells it not from the plains of Agincourt but from the cavernous Boarshead Tavern, where whores and drunkards cavort with the Prince of Wales. Except – they’re not whores and drunkards, but human beings, resolved to squeeze such joy and love as they can against the bitter cold and sea of endless civil war that is 14^th-century England. [Read more...]