Word: macbird
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...interested in your review of MacBird [March 3]. I was especially interested in the photograph of the "L.BJ. cartoon" being used as a backdrop for the play...
...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 dies of a heart attack, and Bobby...
...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...
...consistent tone can be imparted to a play that juxtaposes the somber drum roll of the Kennedy funeral cortege with such inane Shakespearean mutations as "Oh whine and pout/ That ever I was born to bury doubt." But MacBird's basic flaw is that Playwright Garson is a frivolous, scattershot satirist who has no moral vision of her own to counterpose whatever might be regarded as evil in her characters. She has written an apolitical play in which all choices seem silly. The Ken O'Duncs are presented as chilly, ruthless opportunists; MacBird is a mixture of corn...
...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...