Word: cereno
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...apartment examined in gossip columns ("the smart East 80s ... very solid, no patterns"). Now that Alexander Portnoy has made him a celebrity, he is dodging fame with SalI ingeresque determination-which, of course, only draws more attention to him. He used to answer the phone, "Benito Cereno here."* Now he doesn't answer his phone at all, and he tends...
...Benito Cereno--The Robert Lowell play in yet another production. At the LOEB EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE...
...abandon his prejudices (about dutiful servants and degenerate Spaniards) which make it impossible for him to comprehend rightly the situation, even with the mounting evidence that something is wrong and even when his own life depends on correct perception. He insists on the exactly wrong assessment--believing that Cereno's eccentric behavior signifies that the Spaniard intends to harm...
...them as anything but a threat to his life and a danger to his comfortable preconceptions. He presides while his sailors obliterate them with superior firepower. Babu, the last surviver, petitions Delano for mercy: "Yankee master, understand me. The future is with us." Over the protests of Cereno and Perkins ("We want to save someone") and while the lights dim to blackness, Delano empties his pistol into the black's body...
...sense only if the production's narrow reading of the script is expanded. While racism is essential to Delano's behavior, the TCB fails to suggest that the Yankee would defend his (national) values against any threat--racial or not--not by reason or mercy, but by force. Benito Cereno is less a tragedy of malice or vengefulness--suggested by the Theater Company--than of American blindness...