Word: gong
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...representation of dreams within the plays that our dramatists dared to present that fanciful and fantastic caricature of American life which we find for example in the dream scenes of "The Beggar on Horseback" or "The Crime in the Whistler Room". But in "Processional" and "The Moon is a Gong" the frenzied nightmare is in full swing through the waking moments of the whole play. It is the same transition which we find in Eugene O'Neill. The expressionism which had appeared in the terror-striken visions and "ha'nts" of "Emperor Jones" has come to permiate the entire play...
While "Processional" has as its subtitle "A, Jazz Symphony of American Life". "The Moon is a Gong" has as its sub-title. "A Parade with Shouting". "The 'Moon is a Gong" out-processionals "Processional". In his riotous imagination, Dos Passos makes confusion worse confounded. Every device has been accumulated to shock the eye and split the ear. In its revolt from realism it is frankly, blatantly theatrical, and heaps up all the artificial tricks of expressionist drama. As in the Fifth Avenue scene of "The Hairy Ape", so here in the funeral scene masks are used to intensify the impression...
...author of "Three Soldiers," perhaps the most important American contribution to the literature of the Great War, shows a similar courage in his social satire, in his ironic juxtaposition of social conditions in the suffering of these central characters and the raucous shouts of the prosperity boosters, on the gong of the moon
Maintaining the uniformly high standard of production which has marked its previous performances the Dramatic Club, offers to its audience Tuesday evening Dos Passos expressionista play. "The Moon is a Gong" As in past years, the club is keeping to its plan of avoiding the obvious, and of searching the work of contemporary playwrights in an attempt to discover something that is both characteristic and significant in modern dramatic writing. The effort cannot be too warmly commended, and in the present instance seems to have been unusually fruitful...
...Moon Is A Gong" is patently not produced for the entertainment of those who see in the work of the expressionistic school the grotesque death agonies of a diseased romanticism. Not quite concealed beneath its fantastic imagery runs an undercurrent of satire against several of the more inartistic features of American life; and it is this indirect accusation that makes the production of the play interesting from a point of view both technical and broadly introspective. For its continued refusal to exploit the commonplace, the Dramatic Club deserves and will receive the thanks of those who believe that the stage...