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    ‘The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales’ Review: A Spotlight on Income Inequality

    This documentary by Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes is a critique of the Walt Disney Company, but its lessons are basic and obvious.“The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” a questionably well-intentioned documentary about income inequality by Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes, lays bare the rotten core of the American dream and its promise of upward mobility. In other words, it’s dedicated entirely to stating the obvious. Unless, perhaps, you live under a rock — or in a $100 million penthouse.The documentary begins with a takedown of the Walt Disney Company and its labor practices, underscoring the irony of a business like Disneyland claiming to be the “Happiest Place on Earth” while exploiting its low-wage workers. In one scene, Abigail Disney rounds up several of these disgruntled employees, many of whom reveal they’ve relied on food stamps or experienced homelessness. This revelation triggers a broader — and very basic — analysis of the modern history of American capitalism, weaving archival footage of Disneyland’s humbler beginnings with onscreen interviews that Abigail Disney conducted with economists and historians.Disney, the granddaughter of the Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy O. Disney, positions herself as something of a rogue member of the family. A philanthropist and longtime film producer, she has no role in the company, and in “The American Dream,” she argues that her grandfather would not have condoned such gross mistreatment of his employees. This, and the cutthroat means by which the company has expanded, she blames on the evolution of the country’s business standards and the ascendance of free market ideology.Fair enough, but billion-dollar businesses that unfairly compensate their low-skilled workers are, unfortunately, rules not exceptions. What, then, is the point of “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales”? The centering of Abigail Disney’s voice — we also see her tweets calling out the outrageous salaries of Disney executives — makes the documentary a kind of personal reckoning and an attempt to get through to other wealthy individuals, though one wonders how a film that doubles as a “Capitalism for Dummies” video would make an impact. Instead, the documentary wants, above all, to make sure we know how one particular Disney feels.The American Dream and Other Fairy TalesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 27 minutes. In theaters. More

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    Making Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the Stage

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMaking Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the StageA creative team has not yet been set for the proposed show, which would be based on the 1983 novel that spawned the hit streaming series.Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the Netflix adaptation of the novel “The Queen’s Gambit.”Credit…via NetflixMarch 8, 2021, 11:02 a.m. ETBeth Harmon is making her next move.A production company led by a Disney heir is planning to adapt “The Queen’s Gambit” into a stage musical. The fictional story is about an orphan girl — that’s Harmon — who becomes a pill-popping prodigy in the overwhelmingly male world of chess.Level Forward, a company whose founders include Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, said on Monday that it has won the rights to adapt Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel, which has become newly noteworthy thanks to the enormous success of last year’s streaming series adaptation on Netflix.Level Forward is not yet announcing a creative team or any other details of the project.The company has a decidedly progressive bent (it describes itself as “an ecosystem of storytellers, business people and social change organizers”), and is a relatively recent but active player in the theater industry, co-producing four Broadway shows in 2019: “What the Constitution Means to Me,” “Slave Play,” “Jagged Little Pill” and a revival of “Oklahoma!”The game of chess, although seemingly unlikely fodder for song-and-dance, has inspired at least one other musical: In the 1980s, the lyricist Tim Rice collaborated with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of Abba to write “Chess,” a fictional account of a tournament between an American and a Soviet grandmaster. The show had a well-received score that remains an object of affection and fascination for some, but, despite repeated efforts at revisions, it has not found success onstage; it ran for two months on Broadway in 1988.“The Queen’s Gambit” project is just at the start of its developmental life, and it’s not yet clear when or where there might be a production.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More