Word: besse
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...cast: Porgy Frank Wilson Bess Evelyn Ellis Crown Jack Carter Sporting Life Percy Verwayne Maria Georgette Harvey Serena Rose McClendon...
...tremendously swiftmoving drama; and, moreover, the folk atmosphere is not mere adornment, but has a vital part in the development of the plot. A red-coated orphanage band leading the inhabitants of Catfish Row on a picnic; a quack lawyer in a top hat, selling Porgy a divorce from Bess for a dollar and a half; the marvelous scenes of a score of bodies swaying in rhythm as they chant for the dead; these are local color of the highest grade, but they are also integral parts of the play...
...only are there the organized funeral chants, and, at the other end of the scale, the futuristic rhythms of the band, but there is Porgy's sudden turn from prose recitation into a chant as he speaks early in the play, and Serena's prayer for the delirious Bess to Jesus, to "send the devil out of her like you used to do," with the rising refrain of "time and time again!" in which the others gradually join...
...staging does not lag behind the music in effectiveness. There are only three changes of scene, but the varying lights and groupings make all three powerful, especially the few minutes after the picnic, in a heavy, blue-green palmetto jungle, when the exile Crown meets his erst while woman Bess and keeps her until it is too late for her to return to Porgy...
...marry a Tennessee hill girl, one must first have a "homeplace." The $50 a 'legger gave Fayre Jones to keep quiet about dynamiting the Howard house would have sufficed to let him marry Bess Howard, only the money proved counterfeit. What could Jones do but return it? Bess moved to town, began going to "play-parties." Fayre remonstrated but could do nothing until a man to whom Jones turned out to be a brother on the left side, died, leaving a "homeplace." Then Fayre moved in with Bess for his "wife-woman." She gladly planned, by bringing along "child...