Word: oedipus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Theatergoers in Manhattan who saw Olivier as Oedipus last spring knew that he had most of the makings and many of the accomplishments of a great tragic actor. Yet it was still possible to wonder whether he had quite the size of soul and voice and presence to wring the grandest roles dry. If London's generally reliable critics were to be trusted, such doubts were no longer possible. Seldom in a decade has the London Times talked like this...
...indeed, made the biggest splash-when, at season's end, England's famed Old Vic grandly invaded Broadway. After advancing with Shakespeare and being repulsed with Chekhov, the Old Vic swept on to triumph with Sophocles' Oedipus the King, giving Broadway its greatest theatrical experience in years...
Remember Mama, Show Boat, Annie Get Your Gun. Highest acting honors were foreign and male: Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson for their Old Vic Oedipus and Falstaff. Nimblest female performance: Betty Field in Dream Girl...
Dividing the bill with Oedipus-and seeming as incongruous as a fashionable charm dangling from a severely classic bracelet-was Sheridan's 18th Century burlesque of the theater, The Critic. Ragging the playwright's vanity and the critic's venom, kidding the knee breeches off the bombast that then held the stage, The Critic is frequently amusing but fatally long. The Old Vic gave it as bright a production as Broadway is likely to see, and tossed in perhaps the most amazing quick-change that Broadway has ever seen. Half an hour after he had vanished...
...Ulcers & Oedipus. Cynical Vic Norman-whose motto was: "If a thing is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well"-soon discovered that life with Kimberly and Maag was the nearest thing to hell on earth. In the rare intervals when he was not being Evans-ridden, desperate Partner Kimberly, who is The Hucksters' most enjoyable character, frenziedly dulled his stomach ulcers with benzedrine, double-Scotches, expensive prostitutes, and psychiatrists. "My psychiatrist tells me I'm a sex-maniac," he told Vic sadly; "but I told him that I doubted if bulls and rabbits...