Wednesday, October 19,2011

'A well-designed life'

Playwright Sandra Seaton talks with Lansing retail queen Betty Price

by Lawrence Cosentino

As a customer, as a friend and now as a historian, Seaton has tracked Price’s remarkable life for 40 years.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Pure poison

‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ proves comedy doesn’t always improve with age

by Tom Helma

Playwright Joseph Kesserling puts theater critic Mortimer Brewster at the heart of “Arsenic,” an island of rationality in an ocean of insanity. Adam Bright plays him with a consistently effective calmness, while most of the other characters are exaggerated nutcases.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Advice Goddess

All work & no foreplay & the benefit of the dowdy

by Amy Alkon

Remember, people called you “the sensual couple” because you couldn’t keep your hands off each other, not because you couldn’t take your eyes off the clock. Ditching the clock for at least some of the day is essential.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Booked up

Maureen Hirten was the Capital Area District Library interim director; now, she’s got the job long term

by Bill Castanier

The best of times is her recent appointment to director. Hirten, 60, has been with CADL for nine years, starting as a public service librarian in Okemos.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Blue-plate special

Full-time waitress Ellen Airgood cooks up romance with her debut novel, set in the U.P.

by Bill Castanier

Airgood, who has been working at this quintessential diner in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for more than 20 years, is also an accomplished writer who published her first novel this year.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Pure passion

MSU’s ‘Streetcar’ takes you on a thrilling ride through a masterpiece

by UTE VON DER HEYDEN

Right. What do you do with a 64-year-old play that almost everyone knows something about? A play that’s been described as the best play of the 20th century, that’s won every award imaginable and that’s had countless adaptations in film, opera, television and ballet?.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

From fascination to collaboration

Writer-director James Houska works with ‘Conspiracy’ author Loring Mandel to turn an award-winning HBO movie into Riverwalk’s world premiere stage drama

by Paul Wozniak

Based on a lone surviving document, “Conspiracy” dramatically reconstructs the 1942 Wannsee Conference, a meeting of 15 high-ranking Nazis who discussed the practical implementation of the Final Solution.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Meet Loring Mandel

by Paul Wozniak

Chicago native Loring Mandel never imagined his profession might be writing for television. Mandel, 83, wrote his first closedcircuit radio productions for fun when he was 6 years old; when he needed money for graduate courses in music at Northwestern University, Mandel discovered he could make a living from fun.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Pure puffball

Lively actors can’t hide the fact that ‘Odd Couple’ is quaint and antiquated

by Mary C. Cusack

It is interesting that Dowd warms up to the role after doffing the iconic baseball cap, and really hits his stride as Oscar prepares for a double-date with neighbors Gwendolyn and Cecily Pigeon (Charlotte Ruppert and Angela Dill, respectively). As Dowd prances around, slapping on Old Spice and crooning classic love songs, he owns the stage.

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Wednesday, October 19,2011

Turn it down

by Rich Tupica

Darryl McDaniels, or “DMC” as most of the world knows him, made up one third of the pioneering rap group Run-DMC, which formed in 1981 and disbanded in 2001. The iconic trio scored rap hits throughout the ‘80s with “It’s Tricky,” “Walk This Way,” “King of Rock,” “My Adidas” and “It’s Like That.

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