Word: caligulas
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...Camus himself phrased it: "One cannot be free at the expense of others." To extract from such sick, vast-scaled cruelty and violence such mere copybook wisdom seems at the same time elaborate and insufficient. In any case, what turns Caligula into a pathologically fascinating figure keeps him from being in any fundamental sense an interesting one. In much the same way, Caligula has its brilliant bursts of theater, its explosive moments of action, its lightning flashes of revelation, but no sustained drama and almost no inner development...
Cleanly translated by Justin O'Brien, strikingly directed by Sidney Lumet, and with Kenneth Haigh giving an unstinting, unflinching performance in the title role, and Philip Bourneuf and others lending helpful support, Caligula yet falls short of the mark and too often goes slack...
This is in part because, for being so unfettered, Caligula's dream grows oddly one dimensional. It is in part because a dehumanized hero is, in morality-play fashion, surrounded by flatly allegorical types who seldom seem human either; in part because, where the talk does not resemble oratory, it resembles soliloquy...
Mixing theatricality with intellectualism, Caligula is at once too much a mere stage piece-and too little...
...most time-dishonored custom on Broadway is the advertising trick of lifting words and phrases out of context from critical reviews, thereby changing negatives to positives, pans to raves. Last week a half-page splash in the New York Times heralded Albert Camus' early (1938) play, Caligula, which had just opened for the first time on Broadway (see THEATER...