Word: barneses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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The New Republic (Dec. 7) also features an article on the UFW, called "Chavez Against the Wall," by Peter Barnes. The article is especially good for its fuller discussion of the UFW's tactics.
Barnes' play has a central moral lesson that he is willing to hit home with any and all means at his disposal. Some of his techniques go back to his most familiar work, the screenplay for The Ruling Class, but here he is never as heavy-handed or simply dull...
Not everything after this is an anti-climax, either. Barnes' touch remains reliably strong throughout the whole play, which runs for three long and rewarding hours, mixing burlesque, absurdist tradition, and blank verse of an elevation hardly to be found since Eliot: "Twill make a desert of this world/Whilst ther...
No one is exempt from Barnes' curse on the powerful; everyone at the court, from the Queen's talking parrot on up, plays his or her part in the general corruption; from the torturer devoted to his craft to the amiable, worldly Archbishop; and back down to the scatalogical court...
The Bewitched is a difficult play, difficult to stage and difficult to watch, with its share of rough edges. It has had an enormous success d'estime at London's Aldwych Theatre, but as you could guess it's been Travesties that's been packing 'em in. And probably when...