Word: seriousnesses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Conrad is an even more remarkable man than your June 15 article indicates. Many years ago he tried to save a woman from walking into a turning propeller, suffered serious head injuries himself. It's still difficult for him to write, he talks hesitantly, yet has been gradually overcoming these handicaps out of sheer will power and determination...
Then McElroy offered one of the strangest reassurances in military annals. The U.S. need not worry about the Atlas troubles, said he, because the Communists are having "serious trouble" with their intercontinental missile program, too. Still, the Communists are expected to get ten operational ICBMs by the end of 1959, but that was also not so "important," because the Communists would need "some hundreds," as McElroy put it, "to cream the country...
...Much Ado is an uneven work; it shows Shakespeare at his strongest and at his weakest. The basic story deals with jealousy-inspired treachery--a serious theme the playwright would later return to in Othello and Cymbeline. But at this time, Shakespeare was just casting about for a convenient skeleton to flesh. The whole business of the tragic slandering and the ensuing deception he took from older sources, and clearly wasted little effort on; his treatment of them is decidedly thin. The greatness of the play lies in what Shakespeare himself invented: the dazzing comedy of Beatrice and Benedick...
...comedy and farce furiously, and abridge or soft-pedal the Claudio-Hero plot. Other things being equal, this may be the best solution--it is certainly the easiest. But Rabb has favored or scrimped no element in the play; he has lavished as much care on the serious as on the comic and farcical aspects. Consequently we can best see the play as it really is: when the lines soar, this production soars; when the writing flags, so does the production. The director's decision was daring, dangerous, and difficult; and I doff my derby in docile deference...
Richard Easton's Romeo is unevenly effective. He has on previous occasions shown great skill with smaller roles, especially comic ones (his Puck last summer was tops). But Romeo marks his first traversal of a long, serious part for the Festival; and there is no reason to expect it to be definitive yet. He clearly has a fine Romeo within him, though. His diction is clear. He has no trouble making Romeo young enough--and young he must be: Romeo matures a little during the play's course, but he never does become a man. At present, however, Easton...