Author Archives: kennethattheatrepublic

The wounded surgeon plies the steel That questions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art… -T.S. Eliot If there were ever a time to question the distempered part of our body politic, it is now; now, as in no other time in my living memory. InContinue reading “Sharp Compassion: Scalpels Out”

If you really want to know where Trumpism came from, you might spend 15 minutes watching Twelve O:Clock High, the 1949 flying epic starring Gregory Peck as “General Savage,” a hard-tack, uncompromising USAAF (United States Army Air Force) officer who takes over a B-17 squadron so that the old USA can show the rest ofContinue reading “Tough Guys, or Why Trump Does Dumb”

Techne and Psyche: Midway and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood rolls the end credits with the real Fred Rogers playing and singing one of the many songs he composed during the life of his TV show.  It’s a song about sticking to tasks until they are complete, andContinue reading “Techne and Psyche: Midway and A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood”

After a decade or so in the wilderness, Mel Gibson may have made the movie that will bring him back to Hollywood respectability, and he couldn’t have timed it better if some clairvoyant had shown him the surprising election results of 2016 when he first conceived this project. America really needed a hyper-violent, xenophobic, feel-goodContinue reading “Hacksaw Ridge: Gibson Apotheosis”

The first in a series of short tales about the new Tzar at the head of the royal family now running a certain former great Republic.   After months of promising to Make Amerikov Great Again, the former billionaire name-brander, education-fraudster, and steak-oil salesman known as Donald Drumfk is now the Leader-Elect of the nationContinue reading “Annals of Tzar Donaldovitch”

Hollywood Gets It Wrong, Again… But Thanks I went to see “Allied” the other night with my French Canadian girlfriend.   This movie is set in wartime Casablanca and England. And for those of you who might ask, “which war?” I can only respond, “the big one.” Brad Pitt plays an intelligence officer who must decideContinue reading ““Allied”: Thanks for asking”

Eric Lindros has been voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. I hear the sportsjocks talk about this as the correction of a horrible injustice. What none of them knows, remembers, or wants to talk about is the reason why, when he was drafted first overall by the Quebec Nordiques, Lindros refused to go. TheContinue reading “Lindros and the hockey culture”

My play Anatolia Speaks was recently dismissed in a weekly arts publication on the basis that because I am male and not of the country I am writing about, the piece was somehow less valid.   I was deeply amused to read Miss Culkin’s little piece about my play Anatolia Speaks in the last issueContinue reading “What right hath these writers?”

Universal Studios May 26 When you’re in the presence of America functioning as all-out as at Universal Studios theme park, you are in the belly of the beast. This place is the machine of fantasy at its most unrelieved. The thousands of guests are funnelled from pillar to post as efficiently as one can imagineContinue reading “Universal Studios: Nostalgia Trip”