Word: aiuola
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Aiuola Bruciata, the work receiving its first American performance this week at the Tufts Arena Theater as The Burnt Flower-Bed, was written in 1952, near the end of the last great creative burst of its author, Ugo Betti. It is a play that states the problem of modern nihilism with uncompromising starkness and attempts to press beyond in the reaffirmation of human responsibility. Even a cursory reading of Betti's play in Henry Reed's excellent English translation makes it clear why Betti is being hailed on the continent as an even greater dramatist than Pirandello...
...Aiuola moves on three different levels, the philosophic, the political, and the intimately personal; yet all three are perfectly fused. It observes the classic unities of time and place and occurs against a magnificent backdrop of mountains (which the set of the current production has denied us). The theme must owe something to Betti's lifelong career as a magistrate: it tells of the final human hunger to make sense of things--political catastrophies, the death of those we love--by restoring the concepts of guilt and innocence, punishment and choice, in all their dreadful nobility. Only by forcing...
| 1 |