Word: kataki
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...Kataki (by Shimon Wincelberg) is a play, originally done on television (TIME, March 24, 1958), with two characters, one of them a Japanese soldier who speaks all but a few of his lines in Japanese. Marooned with him on a South Pacific island near the end of World War II is a bird-brained, teen-age American G.I. who chitters with naive notions and cliches. The Japanese is seemingly incapable of an ignoble act, while the American is a bundle of petty spites and treachery...
Once it nears its Auden-inspired moral ("We must love one another-or die"), Kataki is becalmed. For its first half, the play, however pawed, ticks with time-bomb suspense; toward the end, there is merely the tame metronome's beat marking empty theatrical time...
...Rashomon, Kataki, Cry for Happy and The Cool Mikado are all on the way to town. The World of Suzie Wong is pulling in crowds right across the street from Flower Drum...
...last week, "you haven't a prayer of getting a job." Cause of her complaint: Broadway is going heavily Oriental this season. The World of Suzie Wong (see THEATER) is only the first of a Far East catalogue that includes such forthcoming items as Flower Drum Song, Rashomon, Kataki, Cry for Happy and the umpteenth revival of The Shanghai Gesture. Even the small, off-Broadway houses are braced for the Oriental invasion, with three versions of classic Japanese No drama...
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