Word: balch
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...play, in a lively new English translation by Germaine and Marston Balch, bears resemblance to Moliere's classic Imaginary Invalid in that Romains, like Moliere, uses medicine as a foil to pierce the frailties of human nature and lay bare the mechanisms which dominate the bourgeois mind...
Next week the Tufts Arena will present Jules Romains' renowned comedy Doctor Knock, which deals with the "triumph of medicine" among gullible moderns. Director Marston Balch has recently fashioned his own English translation...
...even a play. But it's very good theatre. . . .It certainly is not Pollyanna-ish; and I suspect that the play's appeal to people twenty-five years old or under is due to the fact that youth has a tendency to prefer the disagreeable." Marston Balch (Tufts) said that "the play is clearly allegorical: Godot is one's goal, and everyone has his own individual Godot...
Director Marston Balch has solved the set problem resourcefully. He divided the oval acting arena into two parts. On one he built a platform to represent a villa porch, to which a row of suspended colored lanterns contributed much. Steps led down to the other part, which served as the garden. Beyond this, in the space usually belonging to the entranceway, he removed a portion of the wall and built another platformed area to function as a garden kiosk...
...present production has both laudable and disappointing aspects. It lacks real style; but this is extremely hard to achieve short of the Comedie Francaise. Still, director Marston Balch errs in trying to get by on farce. Although the third act has undeniable farce in it, it is a mistake to consider the whole play a farce: it is high comedy, near-farce if you like, but not true farce. I am sure the first two acts would come off better if treated in a less overdone manner...