Word: melodramas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...psychiatric technique of abreaction--the literal replaying of key events--on stage. This allows him to get anything he wants on stage without any question of its being out of place. The choreographed ritual of the blinding, over in an instant, is much less like melodrama when it comes at the end of the play, the logical last step of the psychiatric treatment, rather than, for example, the opening scene. Complaints by practicing psychiatrists that Shaffer fails their test of "psychiatric realism" and oversimplifies their techniques are justified, but only in a narrow, technical sense. But other criticism raised...
MIDNIGHT is A PLACE. 287 pages. Viking. $6.95. ARABEL'S RAVEN. 118 pages. Doubleday. $4.95. Both by Joan Aiken. The author of that incomparable melodrama The Wolves of Willoughby Chase has two remarkably different books out this year, both splendid. Midnight Is a Place is a savage yet romantic tale about what befalls a boy and girl, suddenly homeless and penniless, in a terrifyingly real and at the same time satisfyingly imaginary industrial city in 19th century Britain. This smoke-filled place is appropriately called Blastburn. Among other chores for survival, the girl collects cigar butts from gutters...
...Paul Jackel as Jake and Bob. And when the covering starts to wear thin, there's also considerable potential for pathos. Ableman doesn't have enough control over his material to bring it off, though, and some clumsy inconsistencies and bad writing keep the play at the level of melodrama...
...black hats. Davies's failure to develop Mr. Black's character seemed almost intentional. Mr. Black's distaste for emotion and his calculated and scheming manner made him the perfect model for his vision of a society composed of artificial men. Finally, Davies made sure that Preservation lacked neither melodrama, as in the bit about Flash's dream of his soul speaking to him like the ghost of Christmas past, or comedy, as when a pair of floozies rolled out an enlarged television screen in order to satisfy Flash's desire to appear on television...
Director Ronald Neame (Tunes of Glory, The Poseidon Adventure) has his Nazis parading about like villains in old World War II propaganda melodrama, with delicatessen accents and eyes like hooked fish. Anyone could blow the whistle on Nazis like this. ∎Jay Cocks