Word: americanized
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...added to the stature of man at the expense of God. If man can presume to forgive his maker, then his maker, although omnipotent, is no longer omniscient. MacLeish has humanized his God." Anyway, all theological niceties aside, it was felt that J.B. "opens a fresh dimension in American stagecraft, and presents a challenging statement of philosophy in literature...
...Yale production created a stir in drama circles up and down the Ivy League, drew in droves of New Haven academics and New York critics, and was shipped off to Brussels by the State Department to represent the American theatre at the World's Fair. Charles A. Fenton, Assistant Professor of English at Yale, hailed the New Haven production in the pages of the Nation as a "moving and exciting play" notable for its "superb craftsmanship." "J.B., it's a pleasure to report, is good theatre and a fine display of a writer of genuine intellectual substance who has nevertheless...
...best play of this or many seasons ... reaches heights of poetry and performance seldom attempted in the recent history of the American stage," cried John MacLain in the Journal American. Hobe Morrison in Variety spoke of "this exalted drama," John Chapman of the Daily News thought it "a magnificent production of a truly splendid play," Richard Watts of the Post called it "a fine drama" with "stunning performances" and Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune felt he stood before "a sober and handsome monument" that was "enormously impressive" and, of course, "sheer theatre." Exclaimed John Mason Brown, Critic Emeritus...
...classic role that demands a classic actor with the kind of diction only the classicists of the theatre possess"--and would have preferred to see "Olivier or Richardson" in "MacLeish's exalted poem"; but she had no reservations about the play itself--"I know of no other American poet who could write this legend in such noble and flexible language or maintain, as he does much of the time, its purity and its dimensions." Newsweek concluded its account of opening night by reporting that "the box-office lines stretched around the corner the next day, assuring the author that...
...Life had the great good fortune to be publishing, that very week, their huge, astoundingly vulgar "Entertainment Issue;" it sang of "verse that is both savagely rugged and soaringly lyrical," and used the occasion to add several hundred decibels more to Henry Luce's loud, everlasting orgy of American self-congratulation: "As news about J.B., even without newspapers, spread through New York, the theatre box office was beseiged, and a great play was on its way to being a great hit--proof that the public appreciates exceptional merit." (Earlier in the same issue on "the glittering, gossamer world of American...