THE DIARY OF VASLAV NIJINSKY

Nijinsky, the greatest dancer of his day, was instrumental in ushering ballet into the twentieth century. His brilliant career was cut short by madness. During six weeks of 1917, he began keeping a journal, a first-person account of a great artist losing his mind. His compulsive scribblings demand much of a narrator, who must make choices that normally aren't necessary to make in an audiobook. Though he is a fine actor, though his father knew Nijinsky personally, and though he is under the direction of a formidable producer, John Rubinstein doesn't rise to the challenge. For some reason, he adopts a Russian accent that only gets in his way and gallops through the material with a tone of snobbishness. We hear the overt sense of the lines but none of the underlying significance. Further, the classical musical underscoring only distracts. Y.R. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 00]