Word: oedipuses
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...rabbit symbol plays a "deus ex machina" role similar to the oracles in Oedipus Rex and the Witches in Macbeth. And it is no injustice to mention Sophocles, Shakespeare, and Thurber in the same breath. They differ in modes of presentation, but not in depth of content...
...play, to which Irwin Shaw's script is reasonably loyal, is flagrantly Freudian, and it is to Hollywood's credit that the extremities of the Elms have not been pruned. O'Neill set out to write a Yankee Oedipus Rex, but what came out might more appropriately have been titled Sex Rex. The antagonists of the drama are a father (Burl Ives) and a son (Anthony Perkins), and the subject of their struggle, as in the myths of heroic succession on which the drama is modeled, is the land (a New England farm) and the woman (Sophia...
Opening like a work even better known than Oedipus-two sentries on the battlements of Thebes have for some nights been seeing the ghost of Oedipus' father-The Infernal Machine is most brittle and playful in its long, chatty first scene, where Jocasta (June Havoc), all dolled up for a night out, flirts with young soldiers. But already the ghost of King Laius tries to warn of things to come. When in the next scene a cocky, ambitious Oedipus (John Kerr) appears and infatuates the Sphinx, he does not guess her riddle; she tells him the answer. Again there...
Jocasta. As a last warning of all, on their wedding night they are both hopelessly sleepy. In the final scene some 17 years later, Oedipus is warned again-this time against probing into the past. Everyone treats him with a kind of imploring "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no truths." But he is as dogged about disaster as he was about triumph. When at last the self-blinded Oedipus writhes and moans, Teiresias plumbs his insatiable pride: "He wanted to be the happiest of men, now he wants to be the unhappiest...
...play is fitted out with much such modern plumbing. Yet in inventiveness and impact alike, it somehow falls short. It falls short for one thing because it is so unmercifully long; for another, because it achieves no pervasive tone or attitude. It reupholsters the Oedipus story rather than reshapes it; it is too close to a stunt at the outset, too close to Sophocles at the end. And for all its merits, an intelligent production has actors who are rather at odds with their roles or at odds with each other. But perhaps The Infernal Machine suffers most...