Was reviewer watching Handmaid or reading program notes?
Re: Literary quite contemporary, Sept. 27
I must apologize, but I find Brianna Goldberg’s review of Thursday night’s premiere of The Handmaid’s Tale grossly misleading. First, in its assertion that the play was well-executed and, second, in her assessment of the audience’s reaction.
Admittedly, Ms. Goldberg is well-versed in the lexicon of theatre review, diction often foreign to student readers and, as a result, useless to student readers (especially when picked straight from the program). But very little of the performance redeemed its musical ‘one-step-up-from-slasher-film’ score.
Further, while replicating the general spirit of its namesake, notable and important structural discontinuities lie between novel and opera, namely in relation to Atwood’s Afterward and the opera’s Prologue and Epilogue and, apparently, to the detriment of thematic development.
Lastly, by mid-performance, a considerable number of theatre patrons had vacated their considerably expensive seats-even all the way up in the nosebleed-student section in which I was trapped-rising for a standing ovation not for the performers, the composer, the director, or the conductor, but for Atwood herself; the audience ostensibly saying in one final gesture, “Thank you, Margaret Atwood, your bromidic speculative fiction has been raised to mediocre science fiction as a result of an abominably mindless operatic adaptation! Bravo, and thank god it’s over!”
Andrew Bricker
“Joke” is offensive
Re: Anti-Calendar joke “deplorable”, Sept. 20.
The ASSU Anti-Calendar back page “joke” is indeed offensive to students. For Paul Bretscher to characterize the reaction to this as only coming from administration is ridiculous and mischaracterizes students at U of T as apathetic. I have talked to numerous students, grads and undergrads, who are upset about this.
The student unions and the administration at the University of Toronto work tirelessly to make the campus a welcoming place for people of diverse backgrounds. I worry that this could discourage new graduate students from involvement in their student union. Will they think that at U of T South Asian women are not taken seriously as leaders?
Christopher Collins
