Word: playfulness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...York critics, and was shipped off to Brussels by the State Department to represent the American theatre at the World's Fair. Charles A. Fenton, Assistant Professor of English at Yale, hailed the New Haven production in the pages of the Nation as a "moving and exciting play" notable for its "superb craftsmanship." "J.B., it's a pleasure to report, is good theatre and a fine display of a writer of genuine intellectual substance who has nevertheless always remembered and created emotion." But to Professor Fenton it represented even more than that: "To the literary historian J.B. is a fruitful...
...then, on the cold, wet night of December eleventh, 1958--just eight short months after John Ciardi had despaired of a major professional production for years to come--on the stage of the ANTA Theatre, at the corner of 52nd Street and Broadway, Archibald MacLeish's "play in verse" received its New York City premiere. The production had enlisted a somewhat disparate but unquestionably distinguished group of the biggest talents in the business: Elia Kazan, Boris Aronson, Raymond Massey, Christopher Plummer, Pat Hingle. Everyone involved, in Newsweek's candid prose, was taking "a calculated risk; the drama had arrived...
...best play of this or many seasons ... reaches heights of poetry and performance seldom attempted in the recent history of the American stage," cried John MacLain in the Journal American. Hobe Morrison in Variety spoke of "this exalted drama," John Chapman of the Daily News thought it "a magnificent production of a truly splendid play," Richard Watts of the Post called it "a fine drama" with "stunning performances" and Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune felt he stood before "a sober and handsome monument" that was "enormously impressive" and, of course, "sheer theatre." Exclaimed John Mason Brown, Critic Emeritus...
...level ... a stark portrait of ourselves composed by a man of intellect, faith and literary virtuosity." "This was the first inkling I had that Mr. Atkinson had called J.B. 'one of the memorable works of the century'," the poet said. "Well, after you've worked five years on a play and your whole heart's in it ... well, it's a funny thing to say, but right then I thought I'd break down and cry in front of the camera...
...naturalistic acting in the title role--"This is a classic role that demands a classic actor with the kind of diction only the classicists of the theatre possess"--and would have preferred to see "Olivier or Richardson" in "MacLeish's exalted poem"; but she had no reservations about the play itself--"I know of no other American poet who could write this legend in such noble and flexible language or maintain, as he does much of the time, its purity and its dimensions." Newsweek concluded its account of opening night by reporting that "the box-office lines stretched around...