Word: dictional
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Recounting their story with no Biblical diction, no religious fervor, and with nondescript, timeless costuming, Playwrights Coffee & Cowen make it plausible and human. To Mary they give dignity, and to her experiences in Jerusalem on the night of her Son's betrayal, drama. There is drama, too, when a likable young disciple introduces himself as Judas Iscariot...
With all due credit to Mr. Welles, the Theatre Guild, and the Mercury Theatre, "Five Kings" cannot hope to compete with Maurice Evans' production of Henry IV--inaudible diction alone will ensure that -- and even the best Shakespeare has a limited audience appeal. When it is so difficult to produce one play, it is hard to understand why Mr. Welles has undertaken to produce two, and possibly three. Some of these days we will have to run over to the Colonial after breakfast and find out just how many plays are being offered, but in this case "Five Kings...
...Metropolitan was tempestuous Maria Jeritza, 13 years ago. Last week the Metropolitan revived Thais, in one of the most lavishly costumed productions of its recent years. This time the stripper was Helen Jepson, streamlined Pennsylvania-born soprano. Critics approved Soprano Jepson's singing and her French diction but thought she undressed with a Pennsylvania accent...
...Austrian pacifist in 1916, Jeremiah's thundering against Israel's war of conquest had tremendous timeliness. It might have tremendous usefulness today if it could be produced in Fascist countries. But simply as a play it is ponderous, labored, rhetorical. For the glow of Biblical diction it substitutes "Whither away?" and other pidgin Elizabethan. For the intensity of an ancient people, it substitutes stage mobs who jabber and shriek. Music caterwauls off stage. Puffed-up actors recite puffed-up dialogue. Around a table covered with brass pitchers and pottery the King and his counsellors gather, looking like Armenians...
...machine's possible sound combinations are so various that Voder can imitate the inflections, overtones and shading of human diction. By altering pitch it can change from a man's voice to a woman's or a child's. It can mimic animal sounds, locomotive whistles, the noise of an airplane engine...