Jonathan Leaf is a playwright who writes frequently about the arts and culture.
Posts by Jonathan Leaf
October 18, 2023
Back in the 1970s,
Sixty Minutes had a regular feature called Point/Counterpoint, which came at the end of every show. Each week there would be a different topic. Journalist Shana Alexander would present a standard-issue “liberal” version of the argument while James J.
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August 24, 2023
The actor Hugh Laurie recently observed that “[while] you can chew all the celery you want, three-quarters of us wouldn’t be here without antibiotics.” He was getting at a basic truth.
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April 25, 2023
When the Berlin Wall fell, it was a commonplace observation that there were more Marxists in New York City than in the USSR. If the new Oxford University Press book
Theater & Human Flourishing is any indication, they have since relocated to various university drama departments.
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November 16, 2022
Tom Stoppard’s new play,
Leopoldstadt, is a triumph of the playwriting art. It’s also a triumph of marketing. That’s because its advertising and publicity campaign has sold the public on the idea that it’s a multigenerational saga.
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July 20, 2022
Barry Levinson is 80. The Oscar-winning writer-director has played a part in several of the best movies and TV shows of the past half century—and a few of the worst.
That pattern of mixing abominable stinkers with memorable successes has continued into the past decade.
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June 16, 2022
In the past 90 years, there have been three periods during which the American intelligentsia has been dominated by the most radical leftists. The first was in the Great Depression. This was when it was commonplace to say that capitalism had failed and the great hope of the world was Stalin’s Russia.
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April 13, 2022
Literary Hub is one of the most widely read websites devoted to literature and the arts. Recently, it completed a poll of the nation’s academic presses. Its aim was to find out which of the books they’re putting out they are proudest of.
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February 03, 2022
Who needs another version of
Macbeth on film? You may find yourself asking this question with the release of director Joel Coen’s
The Tragedy of Macbeth, which stars Denzel Washington in the title role and, in the part of Lady Macbeth, Coen’s seemingly ubiquitous wife, three-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand.
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