Word: lucasta
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...potter, taking on as private secretary his illegitimate son, Colby Simpkins-a young man who yearns to be an organist. If Sir Claude's wife, Lady Elizabeth, should take a liking to Colby, Sir Claude means to adopt him. Already part of the household are Lucasta Angel, his illegitimate daughter, and B. (for Barnabas) Kaghan, a foundling whom Lucasta plans to marry. Lady Elizabeth too, in her youth, had an illegitimate son whom she lost all trace of; and being a woman with a flutter-brained, highhanded contempt for facts, she decides that Colby...
...Confidential Clerk Eliot again presents what looks like a group of very worldly people. In the first act he encourages us to assimilate them to familiar theatrical types. Lucasta Angel is a rather spoiled and forward young woman. B. Kaghan is a flashy sort of practical joker who is amusingly disrespectful concerning Lady Elizabeth, the absent-minded dowager who dabbles in spiritualism. After the first act there was much disappointed all in the lobby about the predictable lines, tired characterizations, and old fashioned exposition. In the second act our conceptions of these characters are wrenched out of shape. In response...
Take, for example, Lucasta Angel and Sir Claude Mulhammer. That Lucasta symbolizes Mary Magdalene, the fallen woman who is absolved through faith and love, is suggested first of all by her very name: Lucasta is a name which, despite its original connotation of chastity in Lovelace's poem, has taken on tawdrier associations in our own time (Anna Lucasta) and can therefore be taken to symbolize the fallen Magdalene. On the other hand, the Western legends which sprang up about the absolved Magdalene almost invariably linked her with angels (in the art of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance...
Throughout the resolution of Simpkins' problems there is the repetition of the thought by Sir Claude, his wife Lady Elizabeth, and his doubtlessly illegitimate child, Lucasta Angel, that if someone is able to see us in our God-given role we will be able to assume that persons. Finally, through conversation with Simpkins and his acceptance of them, they all begin to understand themselves. Self-realization does not insure happiness, however, unless you are Christ or pure in faith like the old clerk, Eggerson. As Sir Claude says, one must accept the terms life imposes upon you, even...
Joan Greenwood, a young woman who is always delightful in both voice and appearance, makes Lucasta the most appealing character in the play, and possibly the only human being. In the opening of the second act, the best part of the play from a purely dramatic point of view, she tells Simpkins of her self-hatred and search for security. In Simpkins, she finds the first person who sees her as she wants to be. Whether or not you take Simpkins as Christ, the process of self understanding through rapport with another being is highly emotional and dramatic...