Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...tension of a serious scene. Antigone calls Creon a "cook" in the "kitchen of politics," but she cannot realize how a man can be unheroic and still a king; Mr. Smithies, in more than one sense, has the requisite authority. Perhaps Antigone is not supposed to be a play primarily about Creon and the problem of a professional monarch, but without twisting the script noticeably out of shape, Mr. Smithies contrives to be the most interesting person on stage...
...those on the lookout, exception could be taken to the stridency of Miss Foley's tone, and Mr. Gross's tendency to play on the top of the keys, preventing solidity, of tone in some passages. But these matters dwindled to minute proportions in view of their unerring techniques and intonation, and the endless subtleties and nuances within the broader conceptions of these pieces...
...basic cause of this position is the characteristic Eastern antipathy toward enthusiasm. The current Ivy ideal is the casual man who pursues a line of conduct corresponding to a preconceived code, directed by an unalterable mental outlook in which spontaneous emotions play a miniscule role. If enthusiasm is allowed to creep in, it is carefully controlled and channelled toward "safe" objects such as Humphrey Bogart or the Kingston Trio; it is never casual to display enthusiasm or emotion toward anything more serious than these...
...Shadow Play. To the account of all this-the fencing of crossexamination, the cumbersome but deeply civilized legal safeguards of the individual, the Greek chorus of spectators and newsmen commenting on the proceedings-Author Bedford brings a superb style and a magic eye through which she sees old scenes in a new way. One of her courtroom vignettes: "Some of the seats have emptied. People have crept out into the hall, to send off the latest or just to smoke, for air . . . Looking back through the glass panels of the shut door, one can see into the court-wigged heads...
...Sins of Rose Bernd (German). A steaming plateful of gravy-and-dumplings naturalism in the grand German manner. Nevertheless, this modernization of a Gerhart Hauptmann play about the horrors of unmarried motherhood is often moving, thanks mostly to an intensely intelligent performance by Maria Schell...