Word: leib
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hyperintellectuality is the taproot of his paralysis, an acute self-consciousness and an encyclopedic, even frightening, knowledge of what has already been done in the theater and what little there is that remains to be done. Leib masterfully limns what W.J. Bate has pithily called "the burden of the past" with a virtuoso monologue in which Terry splices memorized quotations from a drama anthology while Wheeler, a translator, punctuates with footnotes. Terry declaims wildly and Wheeler answers, "Hedda Gabler--I think the Reinert translation," launching Terry into another recitation, from another play, which logically follows in the train of conversation...
...internality of action in Terry Rex (much is thought, little happens) presents a dramatic dilemma for Leib, what might be called the problem of the inactive character. Talk, even when it is not "soap talk," is still talk, and begins, after a while, to beg for action. But Leib prefaces Terry Rex with the performance of Terry Won't Talk. This play, after all, is the product of Terry's mind, and serves to mirror that mind, highlighting in dumbshow the roiling preoccupations which, although related to Terry's burden of the past, more directly prevent him from writing...
These ideas are not meant to be taken altogether seriously; Leib's artistry in creating a fine one-act play, and the softpedalled wryness of the pretentious program notes (including quotes from Kafka, Steiner, and Beckett, as well as Wittgenstein) only enhance the subtlety of what amounts to an elaborate parody of an absurdist drama. This is not to say that Leib does not believe in an absurdist view of the universe--he clearly does. He just doesn't believe in writing a play about it. His focus is not on the ideas themselves, which are, as Terry should...
...playwright Terry is Leib's modern man, a Hamletized intellectual crippled not so much by the burden of the past as by his own lack of conviction and values, unable, in the face of the failure of language and thought, even to speak, much less create a play; powerless, without a belief in absolutes, to believe in the absolute of his art; left, when the only true meaning is in silence, only to groan. Leib has, in a way, belied his vision by actually writing an eminently successful modern play (this should be called Terry by Terry by Terry...
...only blot on the premiere is Kenneth Ryan, who lacks a sense of comic timing as Wheeler, stepping on some of Leib's best laugh lines. Which is a shame, because Terry is a very funny play, and depends on its humor to reach those for whom absurdism is not an assumption. (I am thinking particularly of the middle-aged audience that grew up with, not after Camus...