Word: mayers
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...dramatization of the Book of Job which opened at the Agassiz last night is the latest report on Mayer's development. By his standards it is a modest production. The cast is smaller than the cast for his adaptation of Jesus which played earlier in the summer; Peter Ivers's music is much less conspicuous than in the previous show--though the music seems to be one of the niceties which was sacrificed in the desperate effort to get the show open on time. But their reduction in scale and the last-minute pruning serve only to concentrate our attention...
...Mayer had been directing for years before he began writing seriously for the state. Anyone who has ever seen one of his rehersals knows the perfection of his control of the theater from light board to script girl; his exultation in his own unchallenged command of the mannerisms of theater people. His energy, now revealed as anger, as self-pity, as melodrama, never flags: any needle in any vein to keep the show alive. He is the supreme impresario, diverting his own eyes and the world's from himself to his creations. If he could put King Kong on stage...
...same time, and with equal passion, Mayer is a writer and lyricist with impressive gifts. It may be fair to say that his writing was at first an extension of his directing; it was an attempt to extend his hegomony over his theater, to reduce the number of autonomous elements which could stand against his authority. Had there been nothing more to it than hunger for power, he might have gone on to dispense with the actors altogether and made theater with one flashing machine under his personal control. Maybe the thought has crossed his mind. But turning inward...
Furtively and cryptically. Mayer has begun to explore his obession with illness and death. It is a measure of the terror of the obsession itself that from the perspective of good health and at the distance of art Mayer still confronts the horror obliquely--through understatement, burlesque, and nonchalance. But do not be misled by these devices into doubting the seriousness of Mayer's purpose. The wail of fear drones in the songs (some of which, like "Cat Scratch Fever," recur in his shows as anthems), in the abruptness of the pacing and in the roller-coaster whirling...
...closest to being at ease with his part. His job is subdued, as incorporeal and introspective as any Job could be. Something must be done, however, to rescue his lines from the engulfing roar of the turning platform to which he is pinioned in the second act. Even if Mayer has chosen to mute Job--as he muted Christ--and give a raucous verbosity to his tormentors, there is no excuse for throwing away what lines the character does have. The female lead, Susan Channing, as the Devil, superb actress she is, was so wonderfully bratty, saucy and puckish that...