Word: conflicted
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Officially, Roth's crime was "willful disregard and violation" of the church's constitution in disobeying a command from his superior, Kenneth May, bishop for the Western Pennsylvania-West Virginia Synod. More broadly, however, the Roth case is part of an ongoing conflict in the Pittsburgh area over social-action protests by some two dozen Protestant clergy. Unemployment in the region stands at 9%, and in some pockets is almost double that. Roth and his colleagues in the radical Denominational Ministry Strategy repeatedly blamed local businessmen for the economic suffering in the mill towns. D.M.S. and its allies adopted such...
...years. As the story evolves, the focus shifts from Davita's dogmatic, unhappy parents to her own quiet revolution: yearning for a sense of identity and excluded from the adult world of politics, she becomes a fervent Jew and eventually challenges the patriarchal presumptions of her religion. During the conflict between Davita's reverence for Hebraic tradition and her determination to make a place for herself, the narrative becomes far livelier and suggests possibilities for a worthier sequel...
With the transition from elementary to high school in the second act, the play witnesses a surge of physical energy. The songs become more explicit!" sexual in tone, the conflict between spirit and flesh more prominent. All of this makes for some intersting satire, including a rendition of "Mad Bomber" by the guys' physical education class and "Saving Ourselves for Marriage" by their female counterparts. By far the most successful satirical seene, though, is the high school dance, in which the mins don black sunglasses and rock in doo-wop harmony...
...countered by Becky's decision to join the convent, a move that climaxes the sexual tensior that has been building all along. Ultimately, however, the play chooses not to become an issues-oriented forum, but as the upbeat "Best of Friends" duct suggests, a comic arena largely unconscious of conflict...
...conclusion of the play seems a bit on the corny side, it is, in light of the overall tone of the production, appropriately uplifting. The play makes no pretensions of exploring moral conflict with any real rigor, and it is in fact precisely because the cast sidesteps the temptation to treat the show as a spinoll of Sister Mary Ignatius that it works so well...