Word: playwrighting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Philosopher Roland Barthes believes a large part of the tower's fascination is its "fully useless" quality: "It achieved absolute zero as a monument." In a 1975 book, Author Joseph Harriss makes the same point: "Parisians have always recognized the human need for the superfluous." The late playwright Jean Giraudoux, who was born around the time of the tower's conception, came to its defense. It has reached an age, he observed, "when one likes to have children-and American girls-crawling all over...
...Phillips later reasoned that if the automobile was a suicide weapon, traffic deaths should increase after widely reported suicides. He analyzed California traffic fatalities from 1966 to 1973, comparing figures for ordinary weeks with statistics for weeks following suicides that were highly publicized in the state, including those of Playwright William Inge, Japanese Novelist Yukio Mishima and California Wine Maker A. Korbel. Phillips' finding: on the third day after such a suicide, auto fatalities rose by 30%; they leveled off for the week at 9% above normal. "In general," notes Phillips, "the more publicity given to the suicide story...
...which this production has, the play demands a director who can crack the combination of its elegant wit and satirical wisdom with the silky fingers of a safe robber. Stephen Porter is just that sort of director, and the stamp of his assurance is his total trust in the playwright...
This play is moonstruck, magical and mythic. This production hints at these qualities but never quite lends them a fairyland shimmer and substance. Shakespeare's rich fund of vernal imagery all but makes up the deficit. If no real bird song lilts in a bosky dell, the playwright's words linger in the air like ineffable music. Shakespeare seems to extol a gentle harmony in nature, which he feels that gods, kings, lovers and men of common clay would do well to emulate. A shrewd judge of audiences, he sows discord to whet the appetite for concord...
Hungarian Playwright Molnár works this all out like a game of chess with delightful ambiguity, some suspense and a saucy wit. Everything depends on the two leads. In his jealous anxiety, Bedford can twitch his nose like a mouse scenting cheese. He affects a synthetic Russian accent that is weirdly comic and as the disguised suitor, he woos his wife with the ardor of a drawing-room Cossack...