In many ways, both the 13-year-old festival and the straitlaced Singapore government have come of age.

ECONOMIST: A little bit on the screen

But this correspondent, who once worked as an aide in the Springfield statehouse, can reveal that this is not a straitlaced place.

ECONOMIST: Little local difficulties

He recently wrapped a year on Broadway as straitlaced Mal Beineke in "The Addams Family, " followed by a featured role in the Encores!

WSJ: A Broadway Performer Helps Make Business an Act of Will

As Portia fights her straitlaced colleagues to get Jeremiah in, she also fights the family-unfriendly habits she has learned from her fiercely feminist mother (Lily Tomlin).

NEWYORKER: Admission

Moreover, the friendship with Mr Kennedy is personal as well as political: it was the straitlaced Mormon who supported Mr Kennedy in 1991 after a bout of late-night carousing with his nephew led a young woman to bring a rape charge against the younger Kennedy.

ECONOMIST: Orrin Hatch��s harmonies