Word: macleish
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...philosophic drama, as a Job for today, J.B. is an effort of a sort and size rare in today's U.S. theater. MacLeish has confessed that Job's awful ordeal alone matches, for him, the mass sufferings of modern life (see RELIGION). And J.B. becomes a far more relevant contemporary figure if seen, not as an individual, but as a symbol of persecuted multitudes...
Helped by MacLeish's dramatic use of Zuss and Nickles, Director Elia Kazan has to a certain degree given utterance the effect of action, though at a certain cost. He endows the second act with a kind of life, but on rhetorical, loud-speakered, high-pressured terms that avoid flatness by forfeiting severity. Moreover, the acting is uneven. Pat Hingle's J.B. has a homely appeal but has no inwardness; J.B.'s wife and J.B.'s comforters lack the proper skill. Despite its ingenuity and authority, J.B. cannot overcome certain difficulties that philosophic drama is heir...
...committed to no creed, and more uncertain than I should be of certain ultimate beliefs, the God of Job seems closer to this generation than he has to any other in centuries." So says Poet Archibald MacLeish, 66, author of Broadway's latest hit (see THEATER). J.B. is an analogy between the Bible's searching sufferer and modern man. In the New York Times, MacLeish explains the necessities of heart and mind that led him to write the play; he also gives a moving view of his generation's despair-and hope...
...MacLeish needed "an ancient structure" on which to build a contemporary play, and the Book of Job was the only one that seemed to fit the modern situation. The drama of Job is his search for meaning behind his agony, and man today is searching for meaning behind...
Love-to Live. The successful businessman MacLeish makes of J.B. is no carbon copy of Biblical Job; for one thing, he is not as devout. But he is no better prepared than Job was for the avalanche of disasters that fall upon...