Word: melodrama
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Balancing Willy and Biff during the first act, the production builds the groundwork of final understanding at the expense of naturalistic melodrama, and hence loses a certain element of blatant dynamism. This preparation, however, results in a shocking comprehension which heightens the power of the second act, and leads the audience--as far as is possible--to a complete grasp of Miller's play. To force the ultimate meaning from Willy Loman's death and still preserve its impact is a feat of dramatic sensitivity and talent. The HDC has done...
This year's melodrama concerns the efforts of two villans to rest the ownership of the Walker Valley, Pine Bush & Pacific Railroad from a defenseless, aged widow. She, inevitably, has a beautiful daughter who, of course, figures in the dastards' ultimate goal. They do not succeed, however, thanks to the "Courage and Valor in all Things but One" (Drink) of one Truman Pendennis. Not even poor Truman ever seems really doubtful about the happy outcome, and all is well...
Time Limit! (by Henry Denker and Ralph Berkey) is an effective thriller with a head in its tail. For most of the evening a flashback melodrama about a U.S. Army officer who went over to the Communists in a Korean prison camp, it winds up in what Balzac called "the trenches of the intellect," with a barrage of moral and mental queries...
...defendant's refusal to testify obviously disturbs him, yet he maintains a casual air throughout, with the result that he seems not only human, but typically Army. This effect arises naturally from the playwrights' lines, which have neither the sparkle of the drawing-room nor the hysteria of the melodrama, but flow along calmly, with occasional light touches in a vein that could be found in any Army office. Kennedy, however, makes these lines extremely effective by never appearing...
...official account in two important respects. The U.S. Army believes that Sorge was betrayed to Tokyo's secret police by a Japanese Communist. Meissner credits Sorge's downfall to the work of a certain Colonel Osaki of the Japanese secret police who, in the best tradition of melodrama, tripped Sorge over the pretty foot of a nightclub dancer...