BP has agreed to sell its share of an Argentina-based oil and gas company for $7.06 billion in cash, bringing to about $21 billion its total sales of assets to help cover costs stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Former congressman Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) is mourning the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today, praising Chavez as someone who made a difference for poor people. Kennedy told the AP that Chavez helped 2 million Americans through a heating assistance program that the two men worked on together through Kennedy’s Citizen’s Energy charity. Kennedy said Chavez donated 200 million
gallons of heating oil over eight years.
Read full article >> Members receive much heftier retirement packages than most private-sector employees and state workers
do. To admirers, the dilapidated Takoma Theatre is a vital piece of Washington’s history. To its impatient owner, “It’s a piece of junk.”
Both sides are locked in an
increasingly tense saga about whether and how to save a landmark that has failed economically. The majority of American soldiers undergoing amputation for war wounds last fall lost more than one limb, according to data presented Tuesday to the Defense Health
Board, a committee of experts that advises the Defense Department on medical matters. Crucible, Sheffield”How is a woman to have a husband when all the men belong to their mothers?” It’s a question that preoccupied DH Lawrence throughout the writing of Sons and Lovers, as well as in this 1912 drama that was so ahead of its time it would take until the late 1960s before someone (Peter Gill, as it happens) had the courage and perception to stage it.As Lawrence apologetically explained to his editor, “It is neither a comedy nor a tragedy – just ordinary.”
Yet the ordinariness of Lawrence’s plays is their most extraordinary feature. With this pithy study of a pit-man’s marriage in crisis, Lawrence invented social realism 50 years before drama routinely began to include the kitchen sink.”Marriage is a mousetrap,” declares Mrs Gascoyne, an east Midlands matriarch who brooks no argument. “You soon reach the end of the cheese.”
It has taken her cosseted son Luther and his uppity bride, Minnie, less than six weeks to run through their reserves of empathy. He accuses her of condescension; she despises him for being “all marded up, soft as mard”.The
notable aspect of Paul Miller’s production is the fierce eroticism that fuels the couple’s loathing. There’s a primal manner with which Claire Price’s thrillingly conflicted Minnie admires the animal redness of her husband’s mouth at the same time as admonishing him for trailing dirt on the carpet. Philip McGinley’s indolent Luther frequently pulls off the feat of provoking contempt and sympathy with consecutive statements.
Lynda Baron’s Mrs Gascoyne turns out to be less armour-plated than she first appears, and Andrew Hawley is hugely entertaining as the butter-fingered brother-in-law Joe, who should not be allowed anywhere near his sister-in-law’s beloved bone china.• What have you been to see lately? Tell us about it on Twitter using #GdnReviewRating: 4/5TheatreDH LawrenceAlfred Hicklingguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies.
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