Word: alcmena
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...silver-bearded Jovian head on the left was unmistakably that of Alfred Lunt. Theatre Guild subscribers, present for the Manhattan opening of Amphitryon 38, settled back expectantly in their seats. They realized that Jupiter Lunt's eyes were not feasting on them but on the earthly abode of Alcmena Fontanne. And they expected that in the next hour or so something deliciously scandalous would come...
Even those who did not know the legend of Amphitryon*-whose wife Alcmena was seduced by Jupiter-expected this because they knew Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Spirited Aphrodisiantics, urbanely conducted infidelities are the hallmark of Lunt-Fontanne plays, which take on added zest from the well-known fact that Actors Lunt and Fontanne have been contentedly married for the last 15 years...
...Amphitryon 38, adapted for the Lunts by Samuel Nathaniel Behrman from the French farce of Jean Hippolyte Giraudoux, is approximately the 38th dramatic version of the Theban legend of how all-powerful Zeus (Roman Jupiter) had to assume the mental as well as the physical aspects of Amphitryon before Alcmena would bed him. The Lunts studied the play, which they were quick to see contained one of their favorite situations, for several months before trying it out last June in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Later they took it to Baltimore, Washington and Cleveland, to whose critics the play seemed...
Featherlight, the tale gets going when Jupiter's bang-crash arrival on earth- he forgot the law of gravitation-brings it home to him that assuming human simplicity is going to be a very complicated process. To gain Alcmena he has to sacrifice his wistful whim to be loved for himself alone. Husbandly attention Alcmena welcomes, lover's desire she abhors. "Desire is a half-god," she affirms. "Let's leave the half-gods to the adolescent girls and the casually married." In the battle of wits and wills between the omnipotent god and the constant matron...
...Presumably to simplify matters for a nonclassical audience, half the cast of Amphitryon, 38, has Greek names, Half-Roman, while Guild programs listed Alcmena as Alkmena, a simplified version of neither...