Howard Zinn play pays homage to Karl MarxHolding a coffee mug and a bottle of Heineken, a stout, jovial figure entered Pollack Auditorium last Thursday evening. The packed hall was eager to witness the one-man play Marx in Soho, historian Howard Zinn's homage to the father of communism, Karl Marx. Sharply clad in a sable suit, actor Jerry Levy delivered Zinn's oddball tale, in which a supernatural travel mix-up lands Marx in contemporary New York instead of his old home in London's Soho.

Addressing the audience directly, Levy's Marx regaled the audience with anecdotes of eccentric children, coupled with tales of his mostly supportive wife's articulate criticism of what she considered his revolutionary but overly intellectual writings. The play not only characterized Marx as an imperfect but admirable individual, but also delivered blunt critiques of modern society and informative, contextualized readings from the Marx text, Das Kapital.

Levy portrayed Karl Marx as quite a fellow, booming disapproval of economic misnomers like gross national products one moment and bellowing a jolly rendition of "Oh, Christmas Tree" the next. Although the humor laced throughout the script inspired only sporadic, muted laughter-save the lively chuckles of Zinn himself-neither the content nor the delivery of Levy's lines were to blame. The simple digestion of Levy's charming insights and historical analyses often distracted the audience from the humor of Marx's self-deprecating witticisms.

Ultimately, the show proved engaging, even taking into account impassioned criticism of the injustices of many school curriculums. In a closing jab, Levy pondered, "Yes, capitalism has triumphed, but over whom?" After the show, Zinn elaborated on the evening's rambunctious dissection of our economic system, echoing the play's Marxist analyses and describing capitalism as "a sick system" doomed to certain extinction.

-Viola Washburn


Starving Artists wins regional a cappella competition

The a cappella group Starving Artists travelled to Wheaton College on Feb. 19 to compete in the divisional championship of the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella. Starving Artists placed first overall and Musical Director Josh Geyer '05 won the award for best arrangement.

The group has been preparing for this competition all semester and has taken steps to revamp their stage performance and perfect their music.

"We spent a couple weeks starting when we got back from winter break learning a completely new arrangement of one of our songs [Dido's "White Flag"] and musically fine-tuning every part of our songs," Geyer said. "We also refined our choreography.

"Starting about two weeks before the competition, we started putting it all together and practicing entire songs or all three songs at once, until our final rehearsals consisted of running our entire 11-minute set repeatedly."

Starving Artists will now move on to the Northeast Regionals at MIT on March 19, where they will have to compete against a cappella groups from University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts at-Amherst and Boston University.

"There's nothing major that we're going to change for the next round," Geyer said. "One of our friends was nice enough to videotape our performance last time, so we'll be able to pick out things that we want to improve. Overall, though, we're going to stick with what we have."

Starving Artists is the first Brandeis a cappella group to advance beyond the divisional championships since 2000.

"There's no way to predict how we'll do in the next round of competition," Geyer said. "The only thing we can control is our own performance, so the best thing we can do is focus on that and not worry about what anyone else is doing. As long as we come away from it feeling like we did something that we can be proud of, I'll be satisfied."

Editor's note: Ashley Firestone '05, the business manager of Starving Artists, contributed information for this article.

-Brian Paternostro