Word: brentons
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...account of a week in a British public school. It is, rather, a rough synopsis of a lively and incautious new play, The Romans in Britain, whose combination of ancient history, contemporary politics and ageless human indulgence has created Britain's biggest theatrical controversy in a decade. Howard Brenton's below-the-belt pageant, written with profane wit and political passion, is presented under the high-flown auspices of the National Theater, which has been threatened in the ensuing dustup with various reprisals, including the withdrawal of government endowment that totals over $1.5 million...
...Brenton's game attempts to show just what that does mean have been scorned for political superficiality and shortsightedness. But Brenton's presentation is not meant to hold up in Parliament; it is a metaphorical point whose truth is poetic. The ruckus has little to do with such niceties of debate, however. It centers on the generous amounts of sex and violence with which The Romans was staged. Bad enough, for fainthearts in the audience, that the first act contains a lynching, a throat cutting and assorted acts of bloody roughhouse. It also features three Celts bounding around...
James Fenton, drama critic of the Sunday Times, called the play "a nauseating load of rubbish," and yearned for the resignation of National Theater Director Peter Hall, who steadfastly stood by Brenton and the production. Playwright Edward Bond weighed in with a defense so oblique that he never mentioned the play by name. He did, however, call for the resignation of Fenton, while John Osborne, who has had his own wrangles with the censor, addressed a sally to the Guardian: "Sir-I don't go to the theater to see a lot of buggery. We get quite enough...
...grateful retreat. Still, if the fight has simmered down, the heat of the debate lingers. Correspondence and controversy continue, and the letters-diverse as they may be-all share a particular passion, not only for points of conscience and politics but for theater. They are like one of Brenton's Romans, who starts to address Julius Caesar, "I speak from the heart . . ." "A disgusting, fashionable habit," Caesar reminds him, an aside bound to cut any passionate British theatergoer right to the quick...
...young woman who had been a babysitter for the Bishops. Shown the grisly photos, she cried out: "That's the Bishop family!" The flyer showed Annette Bishop, 37, her husband's mother, Mrs. Lobelia Bishop, 68, and the Bishop boys, William Bradford III, 14, Brenton, 10, and Geoffrey, 5. The only missing member of the family was Bradford Bishop, 39. Says North Carolina Attorney General Rufus Edmisten, once Senator Sam Ervin's assistant during the Watergate hearings, "Everything just fell into place" after that hunch by the local Maryland police...