Word: macbeth
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hamp, by John Wilson. The idea of trial is one of the touchstones of drama. In some sense, Oedipus and Antigone, Hamlet and Macbeth are all on trial for their lives and are tested by the ordeal of life. Hamp is not even remotely a protagonist on this grand tragic scale: a World War I private from the British North Country, he has deserted in battle and is to stand court-martial. But in catching a mirror image of existence in the features of a frightened boy, Playwright Wilson raises questions that have disturbed and puzzled men since war began...
Dogs & Cats. It is, in fact, her father's way. Sir Michael is a large, emphatic man whose demonic belief in his own genius and religious devotion to the theater (he once played a performance of Macbeth with a freshly broken ankle) are warmly encouraged by his wife. It was in this highly qualified atmosphere that Vanessa took her first breath on Jan. 30, 1937. She has called her early childhood lonely and frightening, and it isn't hard to see why. Her parents were often on tour or in Hollywood, once for nine months at a stretch, while Vanessa...
Playwright Garson's conceit is to parody and paraphrase Macbeth; President Johnson is represented in the title role and Mrs. Johnson is Lady Macbeth. King Duncan, renamed John Ken O'Dunc, is clearly President Kennedy, and Duncan's sons become Bobby and Teddy. Nothing loath to be malicious, Garson argues that MacBird (Stacy Keach) lures John Ken O'Dunc to his Texas ranch and arranges his assassination in order to become king, while his henchmen sabotage Teddy Ken O'Dunc's airplane. In hand-to-hand combat with Bobby Ken O'Dunc, MacBird...
...there no offense in it?" King Claudius might ask. Despite MacBird's slanderous premise, the answer is: amazingly little. Playwright Garson fuzzes up the key event to the point that it cannot be taken seriously as an intimation of reality. Shots are heard, but MacBird, unlike Macbeth, is never seen with the murder weapon; nothing really connects him with the crime, except a panting desire for advancement and a few veiled hints and innuendoes...
...ineptitude as a satirist is her determination to testify in the courtroom of drama to so many things she knows to be not true. Her tactic for showing aversion to the Viet Nam war is not to question the logic of that war but to imply that Johnson, like Macbeth, has "supped full with horrors" and is an unfeeling, bloody-minded monster. Unwilling to concede the humanity of others, she reduces her characters to caricatures. They eventually take their revenge by draining MacBird of most of its fun and all of its life...