Word: plays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...famous The War of the Worlds broadcast, scared fewer people than Hitler, but more than had ever been frightened by radio before, demonstrating that radio can be a tremendous force in whipping up mass emotion. Playwright of the Year was Thornton Wilder, previously a precious litterateur, whose first play on Broadway, Our Town, was not only ingenious and moving, but a big hit. To Gabriel Pascal, producer of Pygmalion, first full-length picture based on the wordy dramas of George Bernard Shaw, went the title of Cineman of the Year for having discovered a rich mine of dramatic material when...
...fable of Androcles, who removed a painful thorn from a lion's paw, which caused the lion, when they met again in the Roman arena, to fall upon his neck instead of his limbs, has come a long way. A generation ago Shaw put the fable into play form as a droll picture of the early Christian martyrs and a juggling act on religion. Last week the Federal Theatre, seeing in Shaw's play "a pertinent dramatic discourse upon the problem of world minorities," produced it in Harlem, as a Negro problem play, with an all-Negro cast...
...strong man, Ferrovius, loudly debates whether to fight back at his oppressors or practice Christian nonresistance. The lion remembers to growl. The martyrs try to look downtrodden. But to no avail. Androcles fails to transmit a serious social message, for the good reason that it is not a serious play. Shaw's Androcles is a whimsical fellow. His Caesar is a playboy. His frisking lion is fed more gags than Christians. His martyrs are as exhilarated as though they were going to see a show rather than provide...
...high Shavian wit is Androcles entertaining, but for low Shavian tom-foolery-particularly near the end when the play bursts its buttons, when Ferrovius licks all the gladiators in sight, when Androcles waltzes with the lion, when Caesar is chased by it, claims the credit for taming it, orders everybody to turn Christian. Such high jinks do not make one wonder what Shaw "means" by it all; they make one wonder whether he may not have had a hand in Hellzapoppin...
Extradited to New York, Philip Musica took the whole blame, pleaded guilty to grand larceny. The rest of the Musicas dropped out of circulation. Philip stayed in the Tombs, helping the District Attorney's office with the case. "The Human Hair Mystery" got a big play in the papers of 1913, when (according to Who's Who) Frank Donald Coster was a practicing physician in New York...