MELANIA made it to Berlin but was only showing at a single early-afternoon time. Brandishing my coveted CounterPunch press card, I tried to talk my way in for free. The woman at the counter was…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Anglophone theatre people wish each other good luck (or better, anti-bad luck) with the phrase “break a leg.” The Germans double the violence: “Hals- und Beinbruch” — break your neck and your leg, not that…
In early 1746, the parfumier and glovemaker Pierre Dumoulin left his native Lyon and headed north towards Germany. He was on his way to foreign lands to exhibit three remarkable objects constructed by the celebrated…
With the New Cold War heating up, and American citizens under siege at home, it’s no small wonder that a Russian named Berlin can still claim to have composed this nation’s best-loved song. Born in…
There’s little to laugh at in 2026. Yet humor is more vital than ever, even if comic barbs and palliatives aren’t enough to stop the U.S. invasion of Greenland. Ironically, insane American adventures stock the…
Hildegard Knef would have celebrated her 100th birthday on December 28 just passed. Given the number of cigarettes she smoked (Marlboros, three packs a day), the years she spent addicted to morphine (nearly twenty) as…
Seen from within its courtyard off busy Euston Road in London, the British Library is meant to look like a stately ocean liner pulling out to sea against the gables, turrets, and clock tower of…
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre on London’s Southbank, might seem to make for oddly out-of-season fare. Yet the play itself conjures calendric confusion and climate catastrophe. In the midst…
The Christian church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls either in late November or early December. Many traditions mark the occasion with festive pomp as befits a New Year celebration: organ…