The American
October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012
TERIX611
GORE VIDAL
: AS OTO
If musicals based around worldclass rock and pop are your thing, you’ll soon be spoilt for choice. As well as Queen-inspired We Will Rock You at the Dominion and Abbafest Mamma Mia relocating to the Novello September 6 to make way for Beatles-themed show Let It Be at the Prince of Wales Theatre, we now have confirmation that Spice Girls musical Viva Forever begins its run at the Piccadilly Theatre November 27, with a story by TV funnywoman Jennifer Saunders connecting the dots between the ‘girlpower’ groups gaggle of hits. Forgive us though if we’re a little more excited by the approach of Green Day-themed musical American Idiot. Already a Tony Award-winner on Broadway, the tour begins October 9 at Southampton’s Mayflower Theatre, before visiting Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Manchester, and Birmingham, reaching London in December. www.americanidiotthemusical.co.uk www.vivaforeverthemusical.com www.letitbelondon.com
OBITUARY
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Viva Forever, American Idiot, Let It Be: Pop-based Musicals highlight Autumn arrivals
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ugene Luther Gore Vidal was a controversial writer known as much for his caustic wit as for his novels, screenplays, and Broadway plays. He was part of the last generation of American writers who served during World War II, along with J. D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Joseph Heller. Myra Breckinridge was his most highly regarded social novel. Vidal’s grandfather was Senator Thomas Gore of Oklahoma, known for his strong personal and political opinions. Always interested in politics himself, Vidal ran for political office twice, losing both times. His most controversial novel, The City and the Pillar (1948) which featured homosexuality, outraged critics and the public. He, however, rejected the terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’, claiming most individuals had the potential to be pansexual. Screenwriting credits included the historical drama Ben Hur (1959), winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture and in which he claimed he wrote a ‘gay subplot’. In a world he would have created, he might have been president or king. Tall, handsome and aristocratic in voice and bearing, he outraged many by his contempt for those in public office as well as his criticism of the literary establishment. His public arguments with Mailer, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Truman Capote, his mocking of religion and prudery, and opposition to the wars in Vietnam and Iraq enlivened television and many considered him an independent thinker in the tradition of Mark
Twain and H. L. Mencken. Vidal’s prediction of the fall of democracy, the decline of America and the destruction of the environment infuriated politicians; yet, at the same time he wrote of ‘the ancient American sense that whatever is wrong with human society can be put right by human action’. Vidal admired the wisdom of Montaigne, the imagination of Italo Calvino, the insight of Henry James and Edith Wharton but detested contemporary writers Thomas Pynchon and John Barth, and likened Mailer’s views on women to Charles Manson, resulting in Mailer allegedly head-butting him backstage at The Dick Cravett Show. His outspokenness on television and controversial articles may well have hurt his reputation as a novelist. Vidal never married and for decades shared a villa in Italy with companion Howard Austen. He was an insider-outsider who described himself as a ‘gentleman bitch’. His career spanned seven decades and also included numerous essays on literature and politics, short stories, dozens of television plays and film scripts and three mystery novels written under the pseudonym Edgar Box. In his appearances on television and talk shows, he, along with Mailer and Capote, held the public attention in the same way that, sadly, audiences now watch reality programs in the States and the UK. – Virginia E Schultz
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