Word: bentley
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...production's theatrical weakness, not its financial failure, is the real shame. Anne Bancroft contributes a valiant performance, and Eric Bentley's revised translation is more smooth and idiomatic than his previous efforts (while avoiding the Runyanesque inaccuracy of Blitzstein's Threepenny Opera). The least known of Brecht's musical collaborators, Paul Dessau, successfully broadens the tradition of Weill, Hindemith and Eisler. Unfortunately, the modified orchestra blares his tunes over Miss Bancroft's not-brassy-enough voice...
...from Mother Courage, but several other Brecht records are now on the market. Easily the worst is the original cast recording of Brecht on Brecht, a show in which they--as one critic put it--try to make a liberal out of Brecht. A record on the Riverside label, Bentley on Brecht, shows the playwright and his critical champion to good advantage. Mr. Bentley (once a concert pianist) does not have a smooth voice but it could be argued that Brecht didn't, either...
Rockefeller also announced the Class Day Speakers. They are: Orator, Eugene Clements; Ivy Orator, Thomas Babe; Poet, Fritz Eager; Odist, David Cole; Chorister, Bentley Layton...
...Bach Society Orchestra ended its season last Friday night with a concert neither dazzling nor disappointing. In Stravinsky's "Ragtime for 11 Instruments," out-going conductor Bentley Layton displayed the wit and care his audiences have come to expect of him. Inspired playing by the whole ensemble made the lines of the work as airy as lace...
...hold back, rather than banish, their tears. This misses Brecht's sense of the dire human predicament too deep for tears. Brecht tended to use sex for comic relief, but Barbara Harris' sly burlesque of a prostitute is the wrong kind of funny for this play. Eric Bentley's translation is fluently colloquial if occasionally a shade too matter-of-fact for a playwright who was always a poet. Despite these shortcomings, playgoers jaded on dramatic cream puffs ought to seize the chance to swallow intellectual fire...