Word: attempting
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Porgy and Bess is only a moderate and intermittent success as a musical show; as an attempt to produce a great work of cinematic art, it is a sometimes ponderous failure. The fault is not entirely Producer Goldwyn's. The original Broadway musical ('TIME, Oct. 21, 1935), a good try at the great American folk opera, is troubled with an awkward, ill-paced plot-the last act falls flat because all the best tunes are used up in the early part of the show. The libretto, by Charleston-born Novelist DuBose Heyward, is full of the sort...
...Sarasota, Fla. A shoebox on the exterior, the house is full of surprises inside. Ten rooms are ranged over five different levels like so many stage elevations. Ceilings vary from 16 ft. 6 in. (for the broad beach porch) to 8 ft. 4 in. (for the bedrooms) in an attempt "to introduce a certain amount of adventure into the progression through the various areas...
...black market, and $30 boxes were going for $280. Shipping Magnate Aristotle Onassis, realizing that the occasion was a great night for the Greeks (Callas, Designer John Tsarouchis, Stage Director Alexis Minotis, not to mention Euripides), desperately placed ads in the London Times agony column in an attempt to get 33 seats for himself and guests. When a purposeful posse from Dallas came yipping into town but found itself seatless, Ambassador John Hay Whitney patriotically handed over his own four seats, and black marketeers supplied the rest at oil-well prices...
...London critics-who were not notably stirred by his earlier stage tries-agreed enthusiastically. Amid the general applause, a minority of Greene fans hoped that he would not give up religious themes for good; quite a few playwrights have successfully written about manners and immorals, but few nowadays even attempt to deal with miracles...
Among the Renaissance characteristics are balance and symmetry, which Romeo and Juliet has in superabundance. An early member of the canon and only the author's second attempt at tragedy, the play is at times literarily self-conscious and structurally too obvious in its symmetrical balance. Every idea has its complement: love vs. hate, day vs. night, patience vs. impetuosity, chastity vs. bawdry, and so on. Every character has its foil: Romeo and Mercutio, Juliet and Roasline, Benvolio and Tybalt, Friar Laurence and the Nurse. If it is not a supreme achievement, it is still a great play...