Word: lovelies
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Chekhov's narrative is meticulously simple, containing, as he put it, "much talk of literature, little action, and five poods* of love." Director Sidney Lumet, who hammered home The Pawnbroker, pummels away at Chekhov's plot. At the country estate of a retired civil servant named Sorin (Harry Andrews) is assembled a group of people who over the course of two years will quietly destroy one another: Sorin's sister Arkadina (Simone Signoret), an aging actress vacationing in the country with her lover Trigorin (James Mason), a successful author; Arkadina's son Konstantin (David Warner...
Back in Manhattan, complications ensue. One night of love has inflamed this 22-year-old lad, who becomes the ardent wooer of the half-smitten, half-reluctant Julie. Julie's jovially addled mother. Glenda Farrell, thinks the boy is hanging around in order to court Julie's flaming mod daughter Gretchen Corbett, who is almost 18 and as old as Eve. From here on, as in all French farces, the doors take over: who comes through which door when triggers the laughs...
Civilized Fun. One man who comes through the door is a wealthy widower of 45 who seems a highly appropriate match for Julie, but falls head over checkbook in love with Julie's pregnant daughter. Sighs Julie: "Now she'll never graduate from Dalton"-a New York joke about a Manhattan private school, the kind of local allusion with which the show is peppered. To complete the May-October calendar of love, Julie says "I do" to guess...
...tinge. The play enters a sane and plausible plea for a single standard of judgment on age disparity in marriage. If it is acceptable for an older man to marry a young girl, then it ought to be equally acceptable for an older woman to marry a young man. Love is a game for all seasons...
...Preacher-Teachers. Like Christ, he preaches to publicans and sinners, synonyms for playgoers. All the preacher-teacher-playwrights - Ibsen, Shaw, Arthur Miller-are gluttons for sinners. They want converts streaming up the aisles to purify the world. They are all moral abolitionists who, despite their obvious love of the theater, confuse drama with reform and statecraft. They write Plays to Abolish Things By-poverty, prejudice, war, injustice, capitalism, moral obliquity. This is the dramatic form of preventive medicine, and it has never averted a single plague that mankind is heir...