Word: melfi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This one-acter, written by Leonard Melfi, difiers radically in feel from the other two plays. It is one further step removed from what we call naturalism and hardly seems to be taking place on earth. It is essentially not a comedy, and the language operates on a fantastical poetic level that is closer to the cosmos than the nitty-gritty of American life...
...Noon. however, is not the bill's climax-it is Leonard Melfi's concluding Night that is the outstanding offering. Void of the earlier comedy. Night is set in a graveyard where the four corners of America have gathered to mourn the death of the enigmatic Cock Certain. Like the impoverished Italians of Pasolini's Teorama these Americans seem to be struggling, each to possess alone the memory of Cock Certain, perhaps their Christ, perhaps their Satan, surely their source of life. Their struggle though is ultimately a dance of death, as yet another enigmatic figure, a man dressed...
...indefatigable doyenne of off-off-Broad way's experimental Café La Mama. Out of La Mama have come Jean-Claude van Itallie (America Hurrah!), Tom O'Horgan, (director of Futz and Hair), Sam Shepard (the 27-year-old author of Red Cross and Chicago), Leonard Melfi (Jack and Jill) and a host of others. Ellen Stewart announces the evening's program by ringing a homely cowbell. As long as Ellen rings her cowbell, whatever the season brings, the theater is alive...
...produced last season on Broadway by Circle-in-the-Square, Morning, Noon and Night consisted of plays by Israel Horovitz, Terence McNally and Leonard Melfi. Collectively these one-acters made up the finest evening of new American drama of the last theatre season and should work well...
...format of Oh! Calcutta! is rather like that of short short stories and cartoons strung together in the revue fashion of a supper-club show. Though the program does not say who wrote what, the playwrights include Samuel Beckett, Dan Greenburg, Jules Feiffer, John Lennon, Leonard Melfi, Sam Shepard, Tynan himself, and others. Their playlets will doubtless enhance their royalties if not their reputations...