Word: macleish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Trailing clouds of tryout praise, Archibald MacLeish's J.B. found Manhattan critics in a virtually unanimous yea-saying mood. Said Atkinson: "One of the memorable works of the century as verse, as drama and as spiritual inquiry . . . The performance is magnificent." Comparing it to Our Town and On Borrowed Time for theatrical effectiveness, John Chapman of the News added: "A magnificent production of a truly splendid play." "Not only beautiful stage poetry," wrote the Post's Richard Watts, "but also a fine drama that is as emotionally moving as it is sensitively thoughtful...
...Archibald MacLeish's re-enactment in a contemporary setting of the Book of Job. It is also a restatement of it, and, in a double sense, it is a theater piece. The action takes place inside a night-lit circus tent where a sideshow Job has been performing. Two out-of-work actors, Mr. Zuss and Nickles, toy with the Biblical masks of God and Satan they find lying around, and try speaking the roles. Suddenly they are aware of a voice from outside them, are caught up in a story near at hand...
When the best director on Broadway (Elia Kazan for those in doubt), one of the foremost dramatic actors in America, (Pat Hingle) and one of the the finest living poets conspire to produce a play, you are bound to have a masterpiece. And that's what Archibald MacLeish's J.B. is, one of the most distinguished dramatic triumphs of the modern theatre...
Those of us (me) who though last year that MacLeish's abbreviated line form would sound too much like a staccato chant on stage got our preconceptions singed. Here is a playwright who is not afraid of beautiful literate language, and none too soon. He has rejuvenated the anemic field of Poetic Drama Since Shakespeare. J.B.'s quality of language and quality of thought make it one of the few plays worth paying Broadway's orchestra-seat ransoms...
...MacLeish has a universal axe to grind and he does it without the dogma or confusion which usually attend the dramatic genre. He retells the story of Job in contemporary setting and retells it in poetry. J.B. is a successful business man married to a pretty wife, father of four children and president of a bank, endowed with all the material blessings our time can bestow. And he is a "good and loyal servant" to the God who tempts him in response to the taunts of Satan. His children die by accident, war and murder; his home and his bank...