Word: prisoners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...unrelated chapter, one can cringe and say "Aha. He's trying to build suspense--cheap trick." The simple reason Mayer used moth-eaten tactics is that he can use them successfully. Besides, everything else is parodied in this book. Bella Abzug drives a taxi, Bill Buckley is a Tombs prison guard and Holden Caulfield is a proctologist. Maybe, just maybe, the good guy gets squashed...
...Enacting stronger legislation. The Carter Administration last week moved in this direction by proposing laws that would prohibit the laundering of Mob money, tighten loan-sharking statutes and provide stiff prison sentences for operating racketeering syndicates. The proposals, however, do not solve the central problem: the very difficulty of proving charges of money-washing, loan-sharking and running illegal rackets...
...surface--in its jokes and the general tone of its dialogue--John Herbert's Fortune and Men's Eyes revolves around homosexuality in prison life. But the play is really about the exigencies of power relations inside "the joint." Homosexuality, in Herbert's imaginary cellblock, just happens to represent the medium of influence. So when Queenie, one of the cellmates, throws his head back effeminately and announces, "The General (meaning the warden) has had me all over his carpet," he means more than the physical act--he is also implying that he pulls political strings. And when Smitty...
Such a frank and brutal story of prison life would present a tough challenge to any director, let alone an undergraduate one. But Dan Riviera has an intelligent and mature grasp of the delicate tension here between comedy and dead, dead seriousness. So while some problems with execution do come up, he never lets the production seem amateurish...
...depth of the director's and the actors' understanding becomes particularly impressive in the second act, as the prisoners begin to disclose their private feelings about prison life. Queenie lets it slip that he once tried to go straight, but that society wouldn't have him back--and this explains why he so jestingly accepts his life shuttling between street-hustle and prison stints. Rocky reveals that his parents are dope-pushers and bootleggers, but says he's not asking for sympathy. And in the play's most poignant monologue, Mona pathetically tells the story of how the street gang...