Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Superman is not, of course, mere comedy, and the play is susceptible to several levels of interpretation. On the surface, Shaw has built a comedy to explode the popular assumption that man pursues woman. Actually, it's the other way around, Shaw says, as any numbscull might detect. But the issue goes beyond the simple mechanics of who traps whom, sexually speaking...
...paradox and Hell is not all it's cracked up to be. Don Juan, the hero, chooses to escape to Heaven, while the stupid, if pitiable, Ramsden prefers to prolong his visit to the pleasure pots of Hell. No review can do justice to an interpretation of the play, but suffice to say that Man and Superman has paradoxes, ambivalences, and deeper meanings which the actors present clearly and without strain...
...stage that I did that night," he said. The next day the critics unanimously panned him because "I was not ferocious enough, and I did not rave and rant." Realizing this was his first critical and commercial flop in 13 years, he decided toward the end of the play's brief run to act the role as the critics wanted. He "tore through the performance like a madman, and hammed the part within an inch of burlesque," as any adolescent could have easily done. The result was that the audience loved it. "But the performance was no good," Huston said...
...mean to question the critics' verdict on Huston's performance. It was probably no more than good, especially since Huston had to play opposite a poor Iago; whereas Hyman's is a great performance. What I am questioning is their evaluation of Huston's conception (and there is a big difference between conception and performance). Huston's conception was right then; all the critics and most of the audience were wrong. Hyman's conception is right now; a few of the critics and audience are wrong...
...artificial fantasy woven around a master thief and his two young apprentices who get themselves invited to the summer estate of a wealthy British couple and plan to rob the latter of their valuables and their nieces. An example of the frivolous boulevardier school of writing, the play harks back in form and style to the tradition of the commedia dell' arte, of Moliere and of Marivaux...