Word: playwrighting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Last season English Playwright J. B. Priestley's Time and the Conways flopped badly in Manhattan; this season his I Have Been Here Before flopped worse. Priestley wrote in an English magazine last week: "I have always felt that there was an inexplicable sense of menace in New York, as if something . . . were plotting against the soul...
Some historical plays, to be sure, are made of sterner stuff and use the past for what it can say to the present. In Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Playwright Sherwood beats the drum for liberal democracy; in Knickerbocker Holiday, the author of High Tor gives comfort to high Tories...
...this Playwright Allvine has strung together in a series of scenes which include chunks of H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, introduce canny Impresario D'Oyly Carte, and evoke the artistic life of Victorian London. To garnish his text, Allvine has cribbed all the celebrated remarks of the day, making his chatter sound at times like a page from Bartlett's Quotations: Bernard Shaw pipes up with ''Some day Wagner will rank with Shakespeare and Shaw," Queen Victoria freezes her guests with "We are not amused," Whistler snubs Wilde with "You will, Oscar...
...addition to being a warm, sturdy, exciting human being, a permanent symbol who serves U.S. drama as the house of Atreus served the Greek, or as Faust and Don Juan serve the writers of the world. Lincoln's story is well-known, well-loved, an advantage for the playwright greater than the most smashing plot would be; for an audience bringing with it a quivering mass of associations is ready beforehand to participate in the playwright's particular interpretation of Lincoln's life...
...Playwright Sherwood's interpretation is the child of the hour. Psychologically his Lincoln, beautifully played by Canadian-born Actor Raymond Massey, is familiar enough: a salty, sinewy smalltown fellow* cursed with a submerged streak of loneliness and bitterness, plagued by an unsympathetic wife and haunted by an unshakable sense of doom. But Sherwood's chief interest in Lincoln is spiritual, not psychological: it consists of vividly, though not altogether convincingly, tracing Lincoln's growth from an indolent, unambitious "artful dodger" who wanted to be left alone, to a suddenly aroused and embattled champion of human rights...