"And though she be but little, she is fierce"

Martha Plimpton has just been cast as Helena in Shakespeare in the Park's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. (A brilliant bit of casting if you ask me!) According to Playbill, "She replaces the previously announced Missi Pyle, who has withdrawn due to a scheduling conflict." The play will begin performances at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park on August 7th and continue through September 9th. See Playbill for more details or visit the Public Theater site for more information about Shakespeare in the Park.

Boston's Edge has posted a lovely review of The Coast of Utopia CD.

[...] Bennet’s narrative progressions (Moscow) are surging dervishes reminiscent of Michael Nyman. They come complete with richly painted cultural markers, and with descriptive saloon pianissimos (The Telescope). Some old-salt sea melodies ("Riverboat Farewell") float in and out of this score, with the barnacled tonal poetry of, say, a Tom Waits, but the seafaring ambience never becomes thematically bloated. The regional ballades of songs like "Bella Nice" contrast the straightforward theatrical fanfares of "Paris," and vocal histrionics of "The Revolution" and "Le Marsailles" retreats to the tragic drum retreats of "The Failed Uprising," with the scarred vocal fading away. This recording has many interesting moments, and if you were lucky enough to see the plays, it is undoubtedly more than a show souvenirs. [...]

For more Utopian nostalgia, read Katherine's Fourth of July post, dedicated to Alexander Herzen. She includes some good quotage.

Press 53 has just republished The Free Men, John Ehle's book about the Civil Rights Movement. The Legal History Blog posts the following description of the book:

[...] In The Free Men, John Ehle presents an intensely emotional issue in astonishingly balanced prose. Out of print for four decades, it is now reprinted in order to shed light on an obscured portion of North Carolina’s, and America’s, history. The Free Men is a portrait of those men and women, both young and old, who were caught up in a struggle greater than any individual to achieve equal rights for all. [...]

Finally, for lack of any other news, here is an article about Jane Austen from last week's Newsweek.