Word: plays
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What if the average person were to live 300 years? Or 3000? Well, this is the problem examined by Bernard Shaw in his Back to Methuselah. This play is getting its first American production since the 1922 world premiere in New York. It is especially welcome and timely in view of Wellesley's current presentation of Man and Superman. For Shaw wrote Methuselah in 1921 as a companion sequel to his Superman of 1903. In the earlier play Shaw argued his thesis, taken from Schopenhauer, that woman is the pursuer rather than the pursued; and his ideas, taken from Bergson...
...adapter also hit on the idea of having Shaw himself deliver a prologue and brief between-scenes commentary. This material was drawn both from the playwright's voluminous preface and from the postscript that Shaw wrote in 1944 for the Oxford Press' new edition of the play. Felix Deebank, dressed and made up to look exactly like Shaw, delivers all this in fine brogue-tinged fashion...
This show brings out the versatility of the five stars--Celeste Holm, James Daly, Valerie Bettis, Michael Tolan and Arnold Moss--who are called on to play from two to five different major roles each. All these performances are polished. Miss Holm (young and elderly Eve, Mrs. Lutestring, Zoo, and Lilith) seems a bit uneasy as young Eve clad only in a few leaves, but she is first-rate after that, especially in her denunciatory speech to Adam and Cain, and in Lilith's concluding monologue. Daly (young and elderly Adam, Archbishop, and An Ancient) is also uneasy at first...
...United Kingdom may well play a greater role in this investment than the larger dollar area of the United States and Canada, he predicted, since British bankers are a little less fearful of foreign investment than American. This is especially true, he said, of loans to Asia...
...Dean's office late yesterday approved plans of the newly organized Harvard Shakespearian Players to present "The Play's the Thing," selected scenes from five Shakespeare plays...