Word: plays
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Osborne's greatest distinction is his ability to write long, furious, bitterly hilarious monologues, using common speech in a new and corrosively expressive manner. In Nigel Kneale's screenplay, with "additional dialogue" by Mr. Osborne, the brillant, obscene rhapsodies that lit up the play have been ruthlessly cropped, in an attempt to meet the demands of what is always said to be a "visual medium," and nothing can compensate for this loss...
...Miller-Williams influence, and for varying its genteel decorum with a rude, poignant intensity and a new relevance to both current and recurrent human concerns. But the analogous revolution for British movies has already been accomplished by Room at the Top, and the film version of John Osborne's play appears as a good piece of work in an established genre of sex-and-the-class-struggle movies...
...with few concessions made to the sensibilities of a family audience; and yet (again like Hamlet) he elicits a paradoxical sympathy and respect. His subtle three-cornered relationship with his wife Alison and their friend Cliff is still credible and touching, though much less deeply probed than in the play...
Even the faults of the movie are largely those of the play. Mr. Osborne believes, and tells us, that the difficulties in the Porter marriage are due to Alison's shortcomings as well as Jimmy's, but this is never embodied dramatically: she appears as a worn, long-suffering patsy for Jimmy's tirades, with no vices or bitcheries to balance his, and no problems except Jimmy. In their brief moments of loving communion, Mr. and Mrs. Porter like to pretend that he is a jolly super bear and she a bushy-tailed squirrel--an odd and embarrassing touch...
Munro is still searching for someone to replace departed senior Roger Tuckerman, who led the Ivy League in scoring last year from his center forward post. The center forward makes a team go, and Tuckerman was a particularly effective scorer and play-maker. Keith Lowe, a little 110-pounder, will start tomorrow at center, but it is feared he may be too light for the steady pounding...