Word: anastasia
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...program notes for Anastasia point out that only Smirnoff vodka is used on stage. This is one of the few touches of realism in the whole play, for playwright Marcelle Maurette has written most of the lines in an allegorical exposition of Europe's reaction to American aid and a prophecy of Europe's future. "I don't need your pity now," Anastasia, representing the Europe of the future, defiantly exclaims, and Prince Bounine (America) can only stand with his mouth agape, as his materialistic plot is foiled...
...Anastasia pretends to be a highly dramatic play, relating the romantic story of an exiled Russian princess, supposedly shot in the Revolution, who suddenly appears in Berlin nine years later. Discovered on the brink of suicide by a White Russian general, Anastasia at first refuses to admit her identity, then suddenly decides to fight for recognition from her grandmother, the Dowager Empress...
Admittedly the romance in the play is well done. Eugenie Leontovich, as the Dowager Empress, carries her role of the Russian aristocrat with dignity and verve. When wit is called for, she displays a convincingly restrained emotion. Although Dolly Haas, who plays Anastasia, is forced to carry on in a heart-straining tremulo throughout the whole play, she manages to keep it from being tiresome. With her grandmother and her two muzhik, admirers she can even be exciting, while her portrayal of a psychotic soul returning to normality seems accurate, wherever it is allowed to peep through the rest...
...season's first smash hit, The Boy Friend, saw its author locked out of rehearsals with a detective guarding the door. Silk Stockings was more spotlighted during its harassed tryout than are most hits at the peak of their run. Such so-so plays as Anastasia and Inherit the Wind packed enough second-act wallop to have the whole town talking. House of Flowers featured gorgeous rival bordellos, Lunatics and Lovers a bubble bath onstage...
Mobster Albert Anastasia, 51, onetime lord high executioner of Murder, Inc., was stripped of his U.S. citizenship (and was thus set up for deportation to Italy) by a Newark federal judge on a relatively petty count. The court's finding: in applying for legal U.S. residence and citizenship, Anastasia twice neglected to report four arrests (three for murder, one for felonious assault), plus a 1923 conviction for gun-toting...