…surely some things should be left to the imagination? The ancient Greeks knew the meaning of the word “obscene” and obscene acts ”“ castrations, rapes, beheadings and the like ”“ were not depicted in the theatre, but had to be imagined as having taken place offstage, the literal meaning of “obscene.”

Unfortunately for us, we live in the age of blatancy. Everything must be seen in all its disgusting horror or squalor ”“ and usually both. We have been taught since Freud to think that this is somehow good for us. But all it has done is corrupt our morality and obliterate our powers of imagination. We live in an age where every image is an advert. Now I’ve gone and said it: we have forgotten the prohibition on the making and worshipping of images.

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Twelve actors have played the Phantom on Broadway: Michael Crawford, Timothy Nolen, Chris Groenendaal, Steve Barton, Kevin Gray, Mark Jacoby, Marcus Lovett, Davis Gaines, Thomas James O’Leary, Howard McGillin, John Cudia, Jeff Keller, Ted Keegan, Brad Little, Gary Mauer and Hugh Panaro.

I count it a joy that I was able to see it with the whole family. Read it all.

Fans of “Les Misérables” on film or stage may be surprised to know that not everyone in France was of good cheer when Victor Hugo published the book in 1862. The anticlerical set was especially offended by the pivotal role of the Bishop of Digne, who helped determine the course of the novel by resuscitating the soul of Jean Valjean.

As Hugo worked on the novel, his son Charles, then in his 20s, objected to the reverential treatment of the bishop. He argued to his father that the portrayal gave undeserved respect to a corrupt clergy, bestowing credibility on a Roman Catholic Church opposed to the democratic ideals that he and his father held. Charles instead proposed that the catalyst for Jean Valjean’s transformation be a lawyer or doctor or anyone else from a secular profession.

The pushback didn’t work. Not only did Hugo hold his ground, but he amplified the importance of Charles-François Bienvenue Myriel, affectionately known in the novel as Monseigneur Bienvenue (Bishop Welcome). The book’s first hundred pages or so are a detailed chronicle of Myriel’s exemplary life, showing that his intervention on behalf of Jean Valjean was part of a long track record and not a singular aberration.

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In spite of tepid reviews from some film critics, “Les Miserables” is booming at the box office, and that financial success can in part be traced to a group of its biggest boosters: Christians, particularly evangelicals whom NBC Universal went after with a microtargeted marketing strategy.

The story in “Les Miserables” is heavy with Christian themes of grace, mercy and redemption. The line everyone seems to remember is “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

NBC Universal looked to capitalize on those components and promoted the film to pastors, Christian radio hosts and influence-makers in the Christian community.

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When did nuns become funny?

Was it in 1967, when Sally Field first donned her absurd cornette and took flight in the ABC comedy “The Flying Nun”? Maybe it was 1985, when the musical “Nunsense” made its Off Broadway debut ”” soon to procreate, paradoxically, many sequels. Certainly nuns were safe sport by 1992, when Whoopi Goldberg appeared in “Sister Act,” a movie that later became a play in the West End in London and on Broadway.

Americans began laughing at nuns just as the nuns lost the power to defend themselves. In the early 1960s, Catholic nuns were plentiful, working in schools, hospitals and orphanages, and visible, wearing the habits prescribed by their orders. Today their numbers are diminishing, and many of them wear civilian clothes.

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“We have this myth that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. It’s not a very American thing to say, but I don’t think that’s true. It’s true for a lot of people, but you need other things to succeed. You need luck, you need opportunity, and you need the life skills to recognize what an opportunity is.”

–Playright David Lindsay-Abaire.

When ‘Scandalous,’ a musical about Canadian-born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, opened on Broadway this week, it became the latest entry into the risky category of religious musicals.

With the exception of “The Book of Mormon,” which swept the Tonys in 2011 and continues to play to packed houses, many Broadway musicals with evangelical themes have had dubious track records in recent years.

Perhaps hoping to tap into audiences that loved “Godspell” or “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Leap of Faith,” based on the 1992 Steve Martin movie, ran only 19 performances at Broadway’s St. James Theatre. “Sister Act,” based on the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie, was more successful but didn’t break any records.

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Can you give us a sneak peek into the plot?

Son of a Gun presents an interesting mashup of music and narrative. And, from a story perspective, it’s funny. It’s a dark comedy with a serious arc to it. It addresses this question of family and how to hack your way through a life that can be filled with pain, and it asks where the redemption is in the midst of all of it.

Is it autobiographical?

The story emerged from my own life experiences. There are plenty of times where we would hit a roadblock in the narrative, like, What should we do next with this character or this thing? And I would say, “Well, here’s what happened to me.” And that would be the best dramatic solution to the problem. So there’s times it’s stunningly true to my own life, but, of course, I did not grow up in a family band. We were not from Appalachia. My dad didn’t play guitar or sing. There were no duels anywhere. And so on….

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So let’s get this straight: In the consensus view of modern American liberalism, it is hilarious to mock Mormons and Mormonism but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam. Why? Maybe it’s because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of Mormons.

Here’s what else we learned this week about the emerging liberal consensus: That it’s okay to denounce a movie you haven’t seen, which is like trashing a book you haven’t read. That it’s okay to give perp-walk treatment to the alleged””and no doubt terrified””maker of the film on legally flimsy and politically motivated grounds of parole violation. That it’s okay for the federal government publicly to call on Google to pull the video clip from YouTube in an attempt to mollify rampaging Islamists. That it’s okay to concede the fundamentalist premise that religious belief ought to be entitled to the highest possible degree of social deference””except when Mormons and sundry Christian rubes are concerned.

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The more specific you can be the more helpful it will be for the rest of us. We are especially interested in material others might not be aware of that you have found moving or interesting. What specifically brought this to mind is an off handed reference in my most recent sermon to my wife and I particularly liking English and Scottish mysteries. I was then asked about by several parishioners which mysteries and how did we get them–KSH?

On stage in a church on Detroit’s east side, Myra Morrison thrust her right fist down in front of her body and pulled it up slowly – as if she was yanking out her soul and delivering it to God. She was dressed in a white robe, wearing white paint on her face like a mask.

With a flip of her wrist, she glided her hand up, her furrowed brow melting into a face of bliss.

“I give myself away, so you can use me,” a gospel singer sang on a recording, as the Farmington Hills, Mich., woman acted out the words to the song.

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Phyllis Diller, the cackling comedian with electric-shock hair who built an influential career in film and nightclubs with stand-up routines that mocked irascible husbands, domestic drudgery and her extensive plastic surgery, died Aug. 20 at her home in Brentwood, Calif. She was 95.

Her manager, Milton Suchin, confirmed the death but said he did not know the cause.

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The York Mystery Plays, a theatrical tradition dating back to the 14th Century, have been resurrected in an epic production involving an Olivier Award-winning director and 1,700 enthusiastic local people.

It is with a mixture of pride and exhaustion that the two directors of the York Mystery Plays talk about the numbers of people taking part in their production, which retells Biblical stories on a near-Biblical scale.

There are two casts of 250 amateur performers, with bricklayers appearing alongside lawyers and children with their grandparents, who have between them been rehearsing for six nights a week for the past four months.

Read it all and make sure to enjoy mae sure to enjoy all six pictures.

Marvin Hamlisch, the stage and film composer who created the memorable songs for “A Chorus Line,” has died at 68. The composer died on Monday in Los Angeles after collapsing from a brief illness, his family said in a statement.

One of the most decorated composers in entertainment, Hamlisch had won a Tony Award, three Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Hamlisch was still active just weeks ago. In his role as lead conductor of the Pasadena Pops, he conducted a July 21 concert at the Los Angeles Arboretum with Michael Feinstein.

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A Yiddish play with the title “Toyt fun a Salesman” opened at the Parkway Theater in Brooklyn early in 1951. As most of the audience recognized from the name alone, the show was a translation of Arthur Miller’s drama “Death of a Salesman.” It seemed a mere footnote to the premiere production, which had completed its triumphal run on Broadway several months earlier, having won the Pulitzer Prize.

Even so, a theater critic in Commentary magazine, George Ross, declared of the Brooklyn version, “What one feels most strikingly is that this Yiddish play is really the original, and the Broadway production was merely Arthur Miller’s translation into English.”

History, it must be said, has not exactly ratified Mr. Ross’s judgment. In an enduring way, however, he framed a penetrating question about Miller’s masterpiece, which has echoed from the 1949 debut to the celebrated revival now on Broadway. Is Willy Loman Jewish?

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“I think there is a “God moment” breaking out in the entertainment culture that’s partly driven by a quest for profits in difficult economic times, but also by people’s never-ending quest for transcendent meaning,” said Tom Allen of Allied Faith and Family, a marketing agency that is trying to promote shows like “Sister Act” to Christians.

The Tony-nominated musical is emblematic of this religious revival: flashy and brash, yet earnestly spiritual.

The same can be said for the recently closed “Leap of Faith,” which is contemplating a possible national tour.

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Jesus is cracking jokes, sharing parables and dying for our sins in three Broadway musicals this spring, while another six shows feature religious themes that are woven through dialogue and lyrics.

But what many of these productions lack are ticket-buying multitudes who identify themselves as people of faith, a group rarely courted by Broadway producers offering the sort of focused advertising campaigns that turned movies like “The Passion of the Christ” and “The Blind Side” into unexpected hits.

Tom Allen is working to change that. A partner in Allied Faith & Family, a Hollywood marketing firm that aims to attract churchgoers to movies and now theater, Mr. Allen has spent the past 18 months breaking into the cloistered world of Broadway.

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[STEVE] INSKEEP: You’re touching on the part that is maybe even more poignant, that this is a guy, as his story unfolds, who, early in life, had an opportunity for adventure – go off to Alaska, something – and seems to have turned that aside in order to get security. He thought that selling was something that you could do all your life, you could do as an old man and support yourself. And in the end, he doesn’t even get the security.

[PHILIP SEYMOUR] HOFFMAN: No. But it’s his son. It’s his son. You know, he had sons. He really did give his life for his sons. He didn’t do it in a way that, obviously, was effective or got what he wanted or actually nurtured his sons in a way that was going to help them, but he did.
INSKEEP: Has your job of portraying this disappointed father affected your thoughts at all when you go home and you go home to your three kids?

HOFFMAN: Well, it’s – you know, it affects your life. It’s – I really do think it’s one of those plays that just seeps into – as we talk about all these aspects, I mean, it’s never that simple. I mean, this play really seeps into why we’re here, you know, what are we doing – family, work, friends, you know, hopes, dreams, careers….

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As a pastor ”” especially as a woman pastor ”” the Rev. Kristine Holmgren is used to being in the public eye.

In addition to speaking from the pulpit, Holmgren has reached people across the country through the informally syndicated column she wrote for the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune and as a commentator for National Public Radio.

That exposure has perhaps helped prepare her for her newest venture as a playwright.

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Illuminating God’s message of grace in popular culture, including in television shows like “Downton Abbey” and others like “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood,” is the cornerstone of Mockingbird, which strives to connect Christianity with everyday life.

Through mbird.com, contributors, including Zahl, analyze film, music, television, literature, social science and humor, dissecting the contents through a Christian understanding.

“We are not trying to cover popular culture,” said Zahl. “But we are trying to reach people through both conscious and unconscious parallels in good art.”

Read it all and do go check out the website.

By all rights, theatre ought to say its prayers. According to most origin stories, theatre emerged out of religious ritual, not once, but twice: initially courtesy of the ancient Greeks, and then again in medieval Europe, where many scholars trace the rebirth of theatre to the Quem quaeritis, a short section of dialogue in the Easter liturgy. But in New York, a city of 6,000 churches, 1,000 synagogues, and more than 100 mosques ”“ to say nothing of the other faiths ”“ drama often puts religion on stage only to criticise it.

Admittedly, Godspell continues a Broadway run, just as Jesus Christ Superstar prepares to preach its rock gospel on the Great White Way, joining the faith-cased good vibes of Sister Act. But in smaller houses this season, believers rarely get a round of applause….

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[Cynthia] Nixon is a mother herself; her two oldest children are Samantha, 15, and Charlie, 9. Their father is Daniel Mozes, a classmate of Nixon’s at Hunter College High School, where he now teaches English. The couple never married and split in 2003….A year after splitting with Mozes, she began a relationship with Christine Marinoni….

[She is frustrated by]…the skepticism she says her relationship has sparked among some gay activists who find her midlife switch in sexual orientation disingenuous.

“I totally reject that,” she said heatedly. “I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ”˜I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

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On Saturday afternoon, Broadway’s longest-running show, “The Phantom of the Opera,” will raise the curtain for its 10,000th performance. Behind the scenes, it’ll be just another day at work for the more than two-dozen crew members who have been with the musical since opening night, Jan. 26, 1988.

Jimmy Billings, 78, the head electrician for the Majestic Theatre, began preparing the space””tearing out the stage and digging out the basement””eight months before the production was scheduled to arrive at the theater. Now he’s responsible for a crew of 10 electricians, one of whom is his son, Frank Billings.

Mr. Billings hasn’t ever seen the show, and neither has Jack Farmer, 61, who as fly floor spends the duration of the performance on catwalks behind the stage that are as high as 100 feet in the air. “I’ve seen the tops of heads and hear the songs,” he says.

Incredible–read it all.

Both as a dissident and as a national leader, Mr. [Vaclav] Havel impressed the West as one of the most important political thinkers in Central Europe. He rejected the notion, posited by reform-minded Communist leaders like Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and Alexander Dubcek in Czechoslovakia, that Communist rule could be made more humane.

His star status and personal interests drew world leaders to Prague, from the Dalai Lama, with whom Mr. Havel meditated for hours, to President Bill Clinton, who, during a state visit in 1994, joined a saxophone jam session at Mr. Havel’s favorite jazz club.

Even after Mr. Havel retired in 2003, leaders sought him out, including President Obama. At their meeting in March 2009, Mr. Havel warned of the perils of limitless hope being projected onto a leader. Disappointment, he noted, could boil over into anger and resentment. Mr. Obama replied that he was becoming acutely aware of the possibility.

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Before “Godspell” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” first hit off-Broadway and Broadway, respectively, 40 years ago ”” the first like an ember that caught fire, the other like an explosion ”” who but the most prescient or devout would have laid odds on any musical that ended with a crucifixion?

But both shows have been entertaining audiences ever since. And there’s no sign of either of them wearing thin. A revival of “Godspell” opened on Broadway this fall; and a revival of “Superstar,” born at Canada’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival and now playing at the La Jolla Playhouse, is slated for Broadway next spring. One can’t help wonder what it is about these works that enabled them to beat the odds when they were new and that has enticed a new generation now to try to reproduce their success.

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… “Godspell,” which opens Monday in its first Broadway revival, was serious business in 1971. At the time American religion was in a profound state of flux. The pews were emptying out, and children especially were disappearing from mainline Christianity. Vocations to the Catholic priesthood were cratering, and from 1963 to 1972 the number of American Catholics going to Mass declined from about three quarters to half (and kept falling). To take one startling statistic, Episcopal church school enrollment fell by a quarter from 1965 to 1971, the year “Godspell” made its debut Off Broadway. John-Michael Tebelak, who conceived and first directed the show, was himself an Episcopalian who later flirted with the priesthood before dying, at 36, in 1985. His church’s pews, even more than most, were vacant.

Young people wanted to leave the church, but not all of them wanted to abandon Christianity. Many wanted to return to a more primitive expression of their faith, and they reimagined Jesus as an accessible hippie, a cool friend rather than an object of veneration. In 1970, when Carnegie-Mellon theater majors threw together “Godspell” ”” which dervish-danced from La MaMa to the Cherry Lane Theater to the movie screen and finally, in 1976, to Broadway ”” it was quite subversive, or so they hoped, to make up Jesus like a clown. They dressed him in a Superman costume, and he danced joyously with a multiracial cast, quite obviously having fun (and, easy to imagine, having sex).

The musical’s challenge to polite Christian society was not lost on the establishment….

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William Shakespeare was probably a Catholic, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury in an exploration of spirituality and secularism in the Bard’s plays.

Dr Rowan Williams discussed the themes with Simon Russell Beale, the great Shakespearean actor, in one of the most eagerly-anticipated talks of the Hay Festival.

Little is known of Shakespeare’s life and there is no direct evidence of his religious affiliation, but Dr Williams said he believed him to be a Catholic. “I don’t think it tells us a great deal, to settle whether he was a Catholic or a Protestant, but for what it’s worth I think he probably had a Catholic background and a lot of Catholic friends and associates.

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The central theme of “The Book of Mormon” is that many religious stories are silly ”” the idea that God would plant golden plates in upstate New York. Many religious doctrines are rigid and out of touch.

But religion itself can do enormous good as long as people take religious teaching metaphorically and not literally; as long as people understand that all religions ultimately preach love and service underneath their superficial particulars; as long as people practice their faiths open-mindedly and are tolerant of different beliefs….

The only problem with “The Book of Mormon” (you realize when thinking about it later) is that its theme is not quite true. Vague, uplifting, nondoctrinal religiosity doesn’t actually last. The religions that grow, succor and motivate people to perform heroic acts of service are usually theologically rigorous, arduous in practice and definite in their convictions about what is True and False.

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For all of its lewd jokes and potty-mouth banter, “The Book of Mormon” commingles the profane and the sacred, dramatizing the culture shock, the physical danger and the theological doubts that infuse what one might call the missionary narrative. That narrative has been lived out for centuries by Western missionaries in a range of denominations, and it has been expressed in recent decades in a spectrum of art and literature.

“The Book of Mormon” forms part ”” admittedly a loopy and idiosyncratic part ”” of that corpus of work. Both the musical’s respect for faith-based idealism and its criticism of fundamentalist certitude have informed such films as Roland Joffé’s “The Mission” and Bruce Beresford’s “Black Robe,” novels including “The Call” by John Hersey and “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver, as well as nonfiction accounts like “The Rebbe’s Army” by Sue Fishkoff, which is not even about Christians but the Hasidic Chabad movement’s emissaries to wayward, far-flung Jews.

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