Word: constructivist
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...What is this? Constructivist staging or what?" cried New York Times Critic Olin Downes. The Herald Tribune's Virgil Thomson was equally dyspeptic; his evening at the Metropolitan Opera House reminded him of "the French chef who in serving a New England boiled dinner had carved the beets like roses and turned turnips into lilies . . ." The critics' ire and ulcers were aroused last week by the Met's new streamlined production of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, the wonderful old pair of operatic favorites...
Their first production, Loud Speaker, was written by John Howard Lawson, author of Processional (TIME, Jan. 26, 1925). As expected, it is staged against a "constructivist" background and presents the subjective state of the principal characters as well as their objective actions. The virtue of such staging is that, by affording the playwright several planes of action on one stage, it allows greater flexibility than is permitted by the rigid three-walled limitations of ordinary theatre. Thus, in Loud Speaker, the candidate for governor of the State may be discovered mulling over his radio speech in one corner...
...above inditing epistles to Thessalonia, I'm not above writing letters to the Bronx." When a belated spark of rebellion lights up Mr. Midge's poor soul, family responsibilities smother it to death. Mr. McEvoy's brilliant lines are aided by effective staging in the "constructivist" technique-spotlighting that reveals, in various quarters and levels of the same stage, several different offices, the Midge parlor, a radio concert in the making, and other snapshots of life's middle-class procession...