Word: evil
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Little in the play, in fact, is particularly clean: palace guards have become city cops, and Etiocles and Polyneices no longer represent vanquished good and triumphing evil; both were "a pair of blackguards." But in Anouilh's world it is the blackguards, or at least the politically committed, who ultimately survive. And, as the play develops, the survival of Creon--who capitulates to corruption so that he can "introduce a little order into this absurd kingdom"--becomes increasingly more interesting than the deaths of Antigone and Haemon...
...rest, however, I have little but priase. Mr. Britten has skillfully caught the governess's apprehensiveness and growing terror; Peter Quint is magnificently and compellingly evil--particularly in his first wordless and almost muezzin-like wall; and the children sing tunes and the new English music that is Mr. Britten's specialty...
...Dream) and I must indeed admit at once that Mr. Britten certainly has made the best of a bad business. James's ambiguous suggestions of the governess's own insanity have necessarily been ignored: Peter Quint and his cohort Miss Jessel are accepted as real enough apparitions of evil, and governess is affirmed. But this is, perhaps, all for the good...
...production, happily, is worthy of the music. Patricia Neway, whose presence the Festival was fortunate enough to secure, suffered (at least on opening night) from a slightly husky voice; but her acting was ample compensation. Richard Cassily, as Quint, was severe and impressive in his evil; and to the part of Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper, Ruth Kobart brought a warm understanding. Especially impressive, however, were the children, Bruce Zachariades and Michele Farr, who somehow managed to avoid both dooms awaiting most child actors: self-consciousness and cuddly cuteness...
...niece, in whose veins "the fierce old blood of the chieftains" still flows, and a group of MacAskival clansmen, who have made no "decadent concession to modern civilization." But by far the most fascinating character in the book is Logan's chief enemy, one Dr. Jackman, "the hypnotically evil man with the third eye," a kind of Marxist warlock...