All about Eve - Joseph L. Mankiewicz

There are many interpretations about "the meaning" and "the message" of All about Eve. Wikipedia collects several comments about the role of homophobia, communism, Cold War and the rivalry between Broadway and Hollywood. I'm sure all these interpretations are valid to some extent -truth is in the eye of the beholder, and all that.

My interpretation is that All about Eve talks about aging. But, for a millennial, this is also a movie about what being a woman means. Bette Davis' speech in the middle of the road (sadly, nowhere to be found) is a manifesto about the woman condition.

John Osborne Plays 1: Look Back in Anger, Epitaph for Geroge Dillon, The World of Paul Slickey and Déjàvu

According to Wiki and academic reviews, Look Back in Anger changed British theater. That's a statement I can't qualify. The only think I can say is that Look Back in Anger is probably the first literary work about the British lumpen, a class that would become the majority in the last 50 years. Irvine Welsh and Hooligan, just to mention two examples, cannot be explained without John Osborne's work.

The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde

I just completed Harper Perennial's edition of the complete works of Oscar Wilde. The book contains an introduction by Vyvyan Holland, Wilde's son.

A number of critics have dissected and studied Wilde's works. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a masterpiece, and so are The Importance of Being Earnest and Wilde's short stories. The rest of his theater and his poems are OK, but nothing extraordinary. His essays on art and aesthetics require a very high knowledge on the topic; they are not designed for the general public. His essay on The Soul of Man Under Socialism is partly right when it says that Socialism deserves a chance if it makes individualism the core of its action plan -it didn't, in case you were wondering.

This edition also contains De Profundis, the poem that Wilde wrote during his time in prison his lover Lord Alfred Douglas (as usual, Wikipedia contains an excellent summary of the Wilde-Douglas love affair). De Profundis is one of the most intimate and touching texts I've ever read. If I had to recommend this book based on a hidden pearl few people know about, De Profundis would be it.

The Robbers - Friedrich Schiller

Jesus Christ never said what was the reaction of the brother of the Prodigal Son after he made the peaces with his father.

In The Robbers, Schiller looks at this story from the side of the father, and each of his two sons. As the piece develop the reader realizes that all of them have morally sounds reasons to act as they do. In other words, Schiller takes the parable of Jesus Christs and strips it off manicheism while adding psychological complexity at the same time.

That is why theater is better than religion. The ancient Greeks knew that.