Word: hammarskjolds
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...what uses does O'Brien put his historical carte blanche? He argues that Hammarskjold was a pederast and Lumumba an avid heterosexual. Disregarding the question of truth, which scarcely seems to concern O'Brien, is it not a sign of intellectual naivete to argue that the political acts of a pederast will automatically be evil and the political acts of a heterosexual will automatically be good? With similar unsophistication, he argues that only whites hurt blacks. Presumably, after almost 21 years of the Nigerian civil war, even his eyes should be a little wider open than that...
Mark Taper Forum, the play is perhaps best betrayed by description. Acting on behalf of the stockholders of the copper-rich Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga, the U.S. pressures the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold (George Voskovec), to accede to the murder of the Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba (Louis Gossett). At the very least, this proposition proves that a sovereign contempt for the playgoers' intelligence is not confined to Broadway...
...pretend that he is recording straight history, even though he was a U.N. official in Katanga province in 1961 during its secessionist struggle with the Republic of the Congo. In one of the most disingenuous prefaces ever tacked onto a play, O'Brien announces: "My Hammarskjold and my Lumumba are not to be thought of as the 'real' characters of that name, but as personages shaped by the imitation of a real action associated with their names." What O'Brien is proclaiming here is the dramatist's right to distort history and historical characters...
...Austro-Hungarian Army who is blackmailed into spying for the Russians. The "drag ball" scene that opens the second act has been a titillating conversation piece ever since the play premiered in London in 1965. Murderous Angels probes the motives and characters of Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjold as seen by Conor Cruise O'Brien, who was himself in the Congo as head of U.N. operations in Katanga...
...loss, a longing to turn back time and correct its flow and see a smiling Dag climb off the plane at Ndola, a sure knowledge that, were he still alive, the world would be a bit better place to live in. Either as a friend or a biographer, Hammarskjold could have asked of him nothing more...