Word: hellman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Until last week Lillian Hellman's adaptation of Jean Anouilh's The Lark was chiefly a Broadway bird. In Hallmark Hall of Fame's skillful TV version, wispy Actress Julie Harris embraced the difficult role of St. Joan like the old friend it has been and, in striking closeup, breathed her special humor and humanity into a rare historic abstraction. As the play opens, Joan is seated on a crude stool, her head bowed, before her judges. In a series of subtly conceived flashbacks, she plays out her great scenes: from the meeting with...
...symphonies, a large violin work and a short opera), three exciting musical comedies, as well as two ballets. Candide, Bernstein's latest Broadway show, is about to go under, after a stay of two months, because of a heavy-handed collaboration in the book department between Voltaire and Lillian Hellman (TIME, Dec. 10), but its witty score remains a triumph ? it is both melodious and satirical in a manner rarely surpassed since Offenbach...
Candide (based on Voltaire's satire; book by Lillian Hellman; score by Leonard Bernstein; lyrics by Richard Wilbur; other lyrics by John Latouche and Dorothy Parker) is a medley of the brilliant, the uneven, the exciting, the earthbound, the adventurous and the imperfectly harmonized. It is not an especially Voltairian Candide; more significantly, it is not in the least a conventional Broadway musical, for the very good reason that it plainly never sought...
Denied all this, Lillian Hellman's libretto also bears her own strong impress, which is foreign to Voltaire's. Where Voltaire is ironic and bland, she is explicit and vigorous. Where he makes lightning, rapier thrusts, she provides body blows. Where he is diabolical, Playwright Hellman is humanitarian...
...lyrics were written by Richard Wilbur, with help from John LaTouche, Dorothy Parker, Miss Hellman and Leonard Bernstein. They are about on a par with the libretto. Most of the songs like "The Best of All Possible Worlds" and "Eldorado," play upon Voltairean cliches with repetition and insipidity...