Word: engel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Franz and Lili Engel, with their little son Bubi, fled Vienna after their shop was bombed, and Franz had spent months in Buchenwald. In a corrupt and decadent Cairo they live in desperate debt, with Franz confined to a wheelchair and Lili enduring insults and dishonor to make ends meet. A fellow Austrian urges them to go back to Vienna. But just then their U.S. visas come through-only for the consulate's doctor to find that Franz' condition, despite his heroic efforts to hide it, is hopeless. Only by swallowing poison can he set his wife...
...stranded in Cairo. It is a tragedy of a broken nation, and it is the tragedy of one family trapped at the crossroads between nations. Mr. Tabori is clearly more interested in the second problem, and the play becomes a slow-moving, though extremely intense, psychological study of the Engel family and its efforts to obtain passage for America...
Strictly speaking there is very little plot. Franz Engel, wounded in the war and much older than his wife, is forced to depend on her completely while they await their visas in a stifling hotel in Cairo. His wife and son, Bubi, resort to all manner of strategems to obtain money enough to keep the family alive until the visas arrive. As the fight for survival becomes more and more difficult, their strategems become more and more degrading...
...manner of soldiers, doctors, refugees, and Arabs wander on and off the stage, but they all contribute more to the development of Lili Engel's character than to any coherent story. Their own character are sketchily drawn; one--a hunchback doctor by the name of Ghoulos--makes no sense at all. Except for Freund, a Viennese merchant convincingly portrayed by Paul Mann, these minor characters generally overact, perhaps because Director Elia Kazan feels the need of sharp contrast to the complexity of Mrs. Engel...
...outstanding performances of the play, which make it a rewarding dramatic experience in spite of its structural defects, are the interpretations of Mr. and Mrs. Engel by Paul Lukas and Gusti Huber. The latter, an Austrian actress appearing for the first time on an American stage, is particularly excellent in the difficult role of a cultured woman whose ideals and emotions corrode away in the struggle to live. Mr. Lukas is extremely moving in his portrayal of a proud man with indomitable will, who refused to believe that physical weakness could prevent him from achieving his goal...