Word: costigan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...effective Americans in Micronesia. "If you want to get 500 out of every dollar, let the government do it," says one U.S. trust-territory officer. "If you want to wring $1.10 out of every dollar, let the missionaries do it." Best known of the missionaries is Father Hugh F. Costigan, who runs the Jesuits' Ponape Agricultural and Trade School, training 160 Micronesians at a time in such basic skills as mechanics, construction and animal husbandry. Another hard-driving missionary is the Rev. Edmund Kalau, a Lutheran and onetime Luftwaffe pilot (now a U.S. citizen), who is building a youth...
Baby Want a Kiss is a sort of ventriloquiz, a chance to guess whose playwriting voice is being thrown onstage. Dramatist James Costigan can mimic the voices of Edward Albee, lonesco and the Theater of the Absurd, Pirandello and even James Thurber, but except for a few sallies of wit and whimsy, he cannot speak for himself...
...most of their time polishing their halos. Unconsciously, they are cynics who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. They pay a visit to a kind of hermit of integrity, a bachelor, writer and onetime friend unseen for 15 years. A bearded pixy, nicely played by Costigan, the writer likes to surround himself with pygmy baptismal fonts, and serve drinks from 16th century eyecups...
...Costigan must have known he was dealing in cartoon-like commonplaces; his failure is to establish a point of view. The audience is aware that he is being satirical when he spoofs Emil's supposed masculinity, but it isn't sure how seriously to take the psychological mishmash. If Costigan is truly concerned with dreams and guilt feelings, he doesn't say very much, badly. And if the whole play is intended as a boff of modern theater, Costigan fluffs the job by giving the production an overly sober tone...
Newman and his wife have said that they had left the fake West for some real acting in the legitimate theater. And both are always fun to watch and at times as real as one could wish. But because of Costigan's myopia, no clear Mavis or Emil (or Edward for that matter) ever comes through; the only consistent performance is from Barney, the sheep-dog (played, the program reports, by Patrick, the sheep-dog). And he can't save the show. Baby Want A Kiss some how manages to be as inane as its title...