Word: jacks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...years in the middle. Before the gap, the play is unrelieved tragedy; after the gap, it is mostly pastoral romance. For this reason the more superficial commentators have regarded Tale as two plays. It is one play, however; and this production, under the combined direction of John Houseman and Jack Landau, preserves its oneness successfully...
Ellis Rabb's loyal counsellor Camillo, Richard Waring's King Polixenes, and Earle Hyman's rogue Autolycus are all superlative portrayals. These three actors are the finest classical speakers in the company, and they all are ever careful about how they use their bodies. Autolycus, an ingratiatingly light-fingered jack-of-no-trades, is a wonderful creation without a counterpart elsewhere in literature. And Hyman, in and out of disguise as well as in and out of other people's pockets, makes the most of him, with his funny figure-4 stances, his weatherbeaten hat and purple beard...
...have only two reservations to make. In the middle of the play, the directors have Jack Bittner, portraying Time, rise out of the ground wearing a 1958 suit and carrying a wet umbrella over his head. They would be wise to do away at once with this altogether too jarring bit of costuming. In the penultimate scene, they make Hiram Sherman, as Paulina's steward, treat his lengthy account of off-stage doings as though he were supposed to be burlesquing the Messenger of ancient Greek drama. This is a questionable interpretation, although admittedly it does get plenty of laughs...
...Buddhism is growing more chic by the minute. Latest evidence: the summer issue of Chicago Review, which contains nine articles on the subject, a poem, and an excerpt from Zen-loving, "beat" Novelist Jack (On the Road) Kerouac's forthcoming The Dharma Bums. Begins Kerouac: "LET THERE BE BLOWING-OUT AND BLISS FOREVERMORE...
There was Uncle Jack, who was once a character witness for a man accused of bootlegging. The court records in Montgomery County show that, asked how he made a living, Uncle Jack replied: "We are in the hawg business. We steal a few. We also makes a little whisky, dynamites fish, shoots any kind of game we pleases, runs rooster fights and pitfights, bulldogs and such. We gets by right-near the same as all these old poor-rumped people around here does." Asked how he knew the defendant stole hogs, the record's answer: "Because I sometimes hold...