Word: playfulness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...informed Englishman, Tynan can see the American stage more steadily and wholly than nearly any American. "Due to the nature of Broadway--the blockbuster mystique, you know, it's got to be big and bangy," he detects "a tendency to look for the Great American Play all the time ... I think there's a danger that the more temperate drama might be washed out of sight in favor of a play like Niagara, that indunates you... I think the chief danger is the acceptance of excitement for excitement's sake...
...instances J.B. by Archibald MacLeish and Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Williams, "in both of which a great many drums are beaten, but you're not sure what the drums are summoning you for... If the play has a big enough theme, and is well enough directed--excitingly enough directed--I think there is a tendency to equate that with a masterpiece...
...There's no reason why realism shouldn't be poetic in its effect... But now that Kazan is beginning to impose on realistic plays like Sweet Bird and Cat [on a Hot Tin Roof] an operatic style, I think it's dangerous and forced." The mainstream of American drama ("I hate to use phrases like 'mainstream,'" says Tynan) has to do with "observable reality. I think--let's be frank--that Kazan has moved too far away from that without the moral or social realities that are necessary to sustain it. Even in a play like Our Town ... the performances...
...Eliot and Christopher Fry, the leaders of the back-to-verse movement, reminded him of "two very energetic swimming instructors giving lessons in an empty pool.... I think, when the whole zeitgeist is toward prose, when prose has so recently been made respectable (nobody dreamed of writing a serious play in prose before 1870), when we're learning so rapidly about the possibilities of prose ... I just cannot go along with people, like Eliot, who say that there are realms of human experience not accessible to prose. I'd like to know what they...
With a 17 handicap, the Crimson made a final team score of 1411 on Saturday. Handicaps are based on the team's average in regular season play. First in the tournament was M.I.T., with a score of 1417 and an 8 handicap. Tufts, which placed last in season play, came in second in the tournament...