Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Strindberg mansplains it all

Miss Julie by August Strindberg

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In the last season of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the popular lowbrow comedienne Sophie Lennon, played by Jane Lynch, wants to prove her acting chops by starring in a theatre play of Miss Julie.  Despite rehearsal performances that are nuanced, in the actual performance Lennon plays Miss Julie as a variation on her lowbrow alter ego, to crushing reviews.  It turns out that this highbrow/lowbrow collision is one of the main themes of Miss Julie, so Lennon’s portrayal might actually have been a novel approach. […]

Reading the rainbow for CBR Bingo

Butterflies are Free by Leonard Gershe

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Written by Leonard Gershe, who also wrote the script for the Audrey Hepburn film Funny Face, Butterflies are Free is a play that premiered in 1969 with Blythe Danner (Gwyneth’s ma) in one of the starring roles. It was adapted into a 1972 film starring Goldie Hawn and Eileen Heckart, the latter of whom won an Oscar for best supporting actress.  Who knew?!  My background prior to the google search that provided that info was that my parents went to college for performing arts in […]

“We all recognize a likeness of Shakespeare the instant we see one, and yet we don’t really know what he looked like. It is like this with nearly every aspect of his life and character: He is at once the best known and least known of figures.”

Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

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There is a lot to say about Shakespeare, but there is not a lot to know. Bill Bryson, everyone’s favorite kindly uncle, lays the facts bare while gently chiding all of the (mostly bonkers) “hopeful suppositions” that have been presented as facts by well-meaning and often obsessed fans, historians, and scholars. Bryson, himself an acolyte at the altar of Shakespeare, paints a bright and brisk portrait of the man that we know to be Shakespeare. We know very few things about him; there are only […]

Women behaving badly, 19th century Norwegian realism edition

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

Hedda Gabler by Herik Ibsen

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Last year I took note of the Chancellor’s review of A Doll’s House, and realized that I had never actually read the drama, in spite of my admiration for Ibsen (An Enemy of the People was a high school favorite of mine). Wanting to rectify that, and thinking it would be interesting to also revisit Hedda Gabler, I decided to read both plays back to back and see what themes they have in common. My conclusion is that a repressed woman in the 19th century […]

The Play’s the Thing

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The edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Play a Play I read is no longer in print. Hopefully this new edition is just a new cover and has not changed the work of Richard R. George . Roald Dahl introduces the play with a short introduction of how it was sent to him. The end of the play has staging, lighting and other ideas of how you can perform this version yourself. The middle is the play. It follows the movie closely in areas […]

Drama, on and off stage, and getting knickers in a twist in real life

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Raina Telgemeier is amazing and I wish she had been writing when I was a tween.  As it is, I’m happy to be able to give these books to my daughters and enjoy the nostalgia they bring me.  Her first two graphic novels are autobiographical, Smile and  Sisters.  This time around she drew from her life experiences of middle school and doing theater to create an original work titled Drama, and it has lived up to it’s name.  In 2015 Drama had the honor of being on the “Most frequently […]



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