Word: jairus
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ringing of distant bells, the coming of Death, as Lazarus, the whining and howling of mourners and a premonitory dog are all techniques of mystery and horror de Ghelderode has used in other plays. They combine in Miss Jairus with a plot-skeleton which is parable. In the final act, on Easter, as Miss Jairus dies, the townfolk commemorate the Holy Day by taking the sorcerer to a hill outside the town and crucifying...
Among the horrible and the melodramatic episodes, for example, de Ghelderode intercalates what he calls "comic and burlesque corrective potentialities"; a coffin maker, for example, consoles Jairus on Blandine's death before Blandine has, died and insists that she must be dead because he heard is rumored. Without some consistent guide, these corrective potentialities may be abused; when Jairus laments, "What ludicious mishaps around the most dramatic of happenings," they may seem indeed ludicrous, instead of strangely horrible...
...text of the play fails to make clear just how seriously or lightly one should take a line such as Jairus's: "In these distressing moments-so distressing that in one's heart of hearts one becomes sublime because of them-one would like to find soaring sentences, well-turned phrases, with an eternal meaning, that prop up the spirits." In a Mystery like Miss Jairus, such a line strikes me as more an ironic comment than a Gilbert-and-Sullivan sally; it is over such lines that I would take issue with the performance at Tufts University...
...Ghelderode showed little inclination to co-operate in settling these questions. "You are free to reject a poetical work of this kind," he said of Miss Jairus in 1951, "which proceeds from the irrational, from clairvoyance-but you haven't the right to ask me to justify it. I didn't ask what you call the public to go to see this undesirable play which I didn't ask anyone...
...would only disagree with de Ghelderode that Miss jairus is an undesirable play-it is a difficult play. Instead of commenting in detail on the performance, I simply rejoice that at last a competent director, Donald C. Mullin, and cast and staff are giving the play a careful and imaginative production in this country...