Word: barrens
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...search for the Chinese way of doing things occasionally got the better of him. John Carter Vincent, then number two man in the American embassy, remembers visiting Fairbank and finding him "living like a Chinese in a cold, barren office trying to keep warm in a padded Chinese gown. He was in such a bad state with a cold that I brought him back to the embassy and had him stay there until he got over...
...archangel to answer their prayers in return for offerings of jewelry, cash, painted ostrich eggs, rattails and leopard cubs. Disfigured beggars called upon Gabriel for the miracle of a cure. Vendors selling gum, candy, candles, post cards and pictures of movie stars shoved their way through the multitude. Barren women kissed the church's stones, praying the messenger of good tidings to grant them a child. On hand, in case immediate help was needed, were hundreds of swarthy Lotharios, ready to "strike while the iron is hot," as one Ethiopian observer...
Yerma means barren in Spanish, and the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater means barren in English. The latest fiasco produced by the team of Herbert Blau and Jules Irving is a work of the late Federico Garcia Lorca, a gifted poet but an inept dramatist. For two hours, without intermission, the heroine Yerma (Gloria Foster) yearns publicly and privately to have a baby. The playgoer comes out of this hot bathos convinced that this Spanish , town could certainly use an adoption agency...
Actually, Yerma is no-barren. It is her husband Juan (Frank Langella) who is sterile - and doesn't want any babies around the house anyway. An old crone offers her son as an inseminative agent, but Lorca cannot let Yerma commit adultery because he intends the play as a tragic stalemate between honor and instinct. Surrounded by women who take a sensual delight in their fecundity, poor Yerma is reduced to beating her breasts and moaning, "I feel two blows of a hammer here instead of my baby's mouth...
Bolt's scenario preserves the prinking wit and rolling eloquence of the play, but the plot has been smoothed and straightened in its passage through the projector. What comes out is a swift and vivid story. Henry VIII (Robert Shaw), having decided to put away a Queen "as barren as a brick," names Sir Thomas (Paul Scofield) as Lord