Word: doctorate
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Doctor's Bill
...mother of six children, whose combined doctor bills have been at times astronomical, I find the Hoopers' performance inexcusable. To me, a doctor's bill is a debt that is paid not only in money, but in gratitude that cannot be measured...
...paid their bills (which they do annually) to his predecessor. By a series of "free" consultations and by engaging the support of influential citizens, however, Knock buffaloes the rural characters with a bewildering description of their maladies. No one escapes the cryptic medical language and anatomical charts which the doctor employs to convince the strapping citizens of their multiple ills...
Despite the serious overtones, the play is above all comedy, which is what evidently escaped the Tufts' players. The cast was unfortunately headed by Fred Blais, who, miscast as Knock, turned in a dismal performance. While maintaining the Doctor's mock-solemnity, he not only failed to imbue him with the necessary dynamism and authority, but utterly lacked Knock's resourcefulness, wit, and ability to manipulate people. His awkward use of medical instruments, moreover, was not calculated to convince the audience that he was more than a bungler, which Knock most emphatically...
Author Troyat tells his grim, credible story in terms of the diverse fortunes of one family. The head of the Arapov clan is old Constantine Kirillovitch, a doctor who illustrates in his old Russian virtues the fatal inability of the Russian ruling class to come to early terms with the nation's liberal professional classes. One of his daughters is an actress whose sole ambition is to play before the Czar; instead she sees his back in a railway station as he is about to make his exit from history. Another Arapov is a captain in a crack cavalry...