Word: melodrama
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Although powerful and highly theatrical, the play has its problems. Strindberg was interested in dramatic conflict and theatrical tension, not in plot, and his plays have a loose form and pay little attention to careful characterization. Frequently he would resort to conventional melodrama. A modern audience finds it difficult to accept a plot device as blatant as that of the hidden letter in the chiffonier's secret compartment. But Strindberg doesn't care that his plot device was awkwardly introduced. Once he has introduced it, it becomes the quickest means to a desired end, and he can forget about...
HARPER. Private-eye melodrama is revived in lively style by Paul Newman as a gum-chewing gumshoe whose search for a missing millionaire implicates Lauren Bacall, Arthur Hill and Shelley Winters...
HARPER. Private-eye melodrama is revived in lively style by Paul Newman, as a gum-chewing gumshoe whose search for a missing millionaire implicates Lauren Bacall, Arthur Hill and Shelley Winters...
...fine etching of character. The proscenium arch is mandatory, the sets are deep, the action well separated from the audience. The long, pregnant pause is preferred to the passionate cry. This approach plays up the interaction of secondary "characters" for poignancy and comic effect, and plays down the potential melodrama of violent love, suicide and duels. Jonathan Black's staging of The Seagull at the Loeb last season was a fine production within this convention...
...WHITE DEVIL. A revival in modern dress recaptures all the gory gothic elements of John Webster's 17th century melodrama of destruction wrought by ambition, greed, murder and revenge...