Word: sappho
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...first English production, Lawrence Durrell's Sappho is the outstanding offering of the current Edinburgh Festival. Written more than ten years ago when Durrell had only seen two plays ("And one of them was Charley's Aunt"), Sappho probably belongs on the bookshelf rather than the stage. But as a first play, it contains ample evidence that Novelist Durrell could become a major English dramatist, following his recently stated ambition to "explore the vein" of modern verse drama opened by T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden and Christopher Fry, but "in terms of drama not morality plays...
...Festival of the arts promises a return to pre-eminence this year under a new artistic director, Lord Harewood, 38, music-critic cousin of Queen Elizabeth. With John Osborne's Luther (see above), he will present the Bristol Old Vic's version of Lawrence Durrell's Sappho and Wolf (Expresso Bongo) Mankowitz' adaptation of Friedrich Duerrenmatt's Frank V, described as the "musical history of a private bank." Then there is also the famed Edinburgh "Fringe"-small, independent productions that sprout by the dozen (about 60 last year), have no official connection with the festival...
...Mark Gospel written in silver on 33 leaves of purple vellum (and where the hard-scrabbling islanders, says a visitor, "live on packages from relatives in New Jersey"); wooded Samos, divided from Turkey by a spectacular channel; Chios, one of Homer's many birthplaces; Lesbos, where Sappho wrote her molten poems...
Among the works of lesser known artists, Renee Sintenis' edition of Sappho (in Greek) is a combined triumph of drawing and typography. the Greek letters engraved by the artist's husband, E.R. Weiss, match the style of the graceful line engravings...
...slatternly flutter of wings, the voice of hypocrite coo, the unspeakable filth-such are the marks of the city pigeon, that most evil and cunning of birds. Fully a generation ago, a sentient woman, the Sappho of her age, sounded the alarm: "Pigeons on the grass, alas!" Yet, despite this warning, the era of appeasement of these feathered spongers has continued...