Category Archive: RELIGION
The Doctor
Adelaide Festival Theatre (5 March 2020) (Written and Directed by Robert Icke; adapted from the play “Professor Bernhardi” by Arthur Schnitzler) This piece is a playground for ethicists, a sociologist’s paradise, and a nod to Lord Melbourne, who said of Macauley, “I wish that I was as sure of any one thing, as Tom Macaulay is sure of everything.” Whilst a contemporary adaptation of a 1912 play, set in the antisemitic and ferociously Catholic Austrian Empire, takes hostages to anachronism, the dilemmas raised remain fresh and probably insoluble. Dr Ruth Wolff (Juliet Stevenson) is the founder and head of the…
Continue Reading →Tranquillity, Too: A Revelation
(An Allegory) Behold, he cometh with clouds He had a second rate mind, and his name had been Register Seven. At two o’clock in the morning, after night fill, the infomer-cial for a “fat-free infuser” caused him to get into his zombie-mobile and drive to a window to collect his succulent “Stak-A-Krap.” He could eat that for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; the taste portable, running all over, smelling like a wet dog on a sunny day. So he ended up working there, managing what management called “the dining area.” His diseased yearnings had gotten him into difficulties with earlier jobs….
Continue Reading →The Righteous Mind
'Resurrection of the Righteous and Coronation of the Virgin' by Francesco Bassano the Younger
(Or “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion“) (written by Jonathon Haidt) (2012) Yes, TVC knows that our reviews are not up-to-date: this book was published in 2012 and it is now several years hence. Note that we reviewed Indoctrinaire (1971) this year, as well as A Farewell to Arms (1929), and Those Barren Leaves (1925) for example. Why, we only got around to reviewing The Brothers Karamazov (1880) last year. So give us a break – especially since recent events across the world (particularly Tr(i)umphalism, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Brexit, the crisis in Syria, and the Yellow-Jacket revolt in France) have made…
Continue Reading →A Plague o’ Both Your Houses!
We are sped, and sick of you both: so bent out of shape with hate and ancient enmities… Israel We know the Jews can claim to be the first in Zion, a 3000 year-old legacy, and that whilst it was under Muslim rule since the 7th century, such others are more or less interlopers (Jerusalem gets 700 odd mentions in the Old Testament, none in the Qur’an), although for centuries the Holy Lands have been recognised as multi-faith. (There’s no particular reason to criticise President Trump’s incendiary move to locate the US Embassy in Jerusalem – being nice, polite and diplomatic doesn’t sizzle any…
Continue Reading →Paradise on 10£ a Day
April 27, 1667 – John Milton assigned the copyright to Paradise Lost for 10£. Half then, half later: he should have made it 5£ plus a percentage. And did those pounds in ancient time make up for all of his striving, and his sight? Speculation as to why Milton wrote Satan in such a sexy way – he is close to the star of the show – and yet convicted him of an impious war on heaven on the mother of all monarchs, God herself – Milton, a congenital republican – leads nowhere, and so we just take the time…
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