Word: macbird
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...last year MacBird (we are told) has been circulating at anti-war rallies and publishers' luncheons, waiting for a cause to happen to it. None did, and the critics made their own. MacDonald, Brustein, Clureman and Robert Lowell declared the play a theatrical experience of sheer delight, even if its political argument was pernicious nonsense; Kerr and Lionel Abel took no delight at all in the politics, and found no other grounds for applause. MacBird's referents in real life are obvious and tangible: a jowly, gutter-mouthed Lyndon Johnson supported by assorted cronies and a megalomaniacal wife; a string...
...taking a good swipe at every available special interest group, MacBird avoids agitprop and falls somewhat heavily into the category of the Interesting. All hysterical remarks about the play's political truth aside, the best that can be said for it is that it provides a vaguely satisfying hour's reading; the worst, that it leaves the reader with a swelling sense of self-satisfaction. After...
...true. MacBird's too easy to attack...
...unhappy when I couldn't find a corresponding scene (in Shakespeare)--then I had to write the scene myself. I'm glad I used Shakespeare; it allowed me, an inexperienced playwright, to shape things in the play." Macbeth, Hamlet and Julius Casear provide matrices for most of MacBird's episodes, and supply the better part of the linguistic embroidery. Miss Garson also draws on Othello for bits of martial brouhaha and on Richard II for the pervasive vegetable metaphor that crops up in MacBird's first press conference ("This land will be a garden carefully pruned...
...tedious dialogue on radical strategy from the witches) and a generous deployment of sound and properties, have tightened up an unwieldy piece of theatre. The mounting racket of loudspeakers and the only rarely excessive musical numbers create a rhythm which jars the principals past MacBird's remaining snags. John Seitzg, who stood in on Philip Hanson's MacBird last week, was purple with Texas affect and--but for an inexplicable and apparently deliberate resemblance to F.D.R.--vehemently convincing. William Lafe, Roger Davis and Kevin O'Neal provide three mail-order Ken O'Duncs who slip in and out of Kennedese...