Word: shaffers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...historic opening at Broadway's Plymouth Theater. No sooner had the animal cries of pain subsided, the drumming hoofs died away, than the audience leaped to its feet to give Playwright Peter Shaffer, seated in a box, a five-minute ovation. No one could recall such a spontaneous demonstration on Broadway since Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened in 1949. The shy Shaffer was overwhelmed. "It's never happened to me before," he said. "I cry every time I think about...
...took Shaffer 2½ years to write Equus, the dazzling psychological thriller-about a boy who blinds six horses-that is now Broadway's rarest ticket. He had heard in 1972 about the incident on which the play is based. A stableboy had been brought before the magistrates in a rural part of England, accused of blinding with a poker the 26 horses he cared for. The story haunted Shaffer. He never tried to find out the actual details because "I'm not a journalist or a photographer." He is, however, a consummate technician. He delved into...
Queasy Subjects. Equus' triumph on Broadway is more than a personal one for Shaffer. It is also a tribute to the vitality of British theater. Once again this year Broadway has imported much of its excitement from London. Apart from Equus, the two most highly praised new plays are Alan Ayckbourn's farce Absurd Person Singular and Peter Nichols' black comedy The National Health. And next week the Royal Shakespeare Company's Sherlock Holmes will arrive from Washington, B.C., where it has played to record audiences...
...their heads are airy, stylized masks of interlaced leather and silver wire. These possess such hieratic dignity and beauty that a special citation should be awarded Scenery Designer and Costumer John Napier. How could these noble animals be maimed by a boy who revered them? For answers, Playwright Shaffer digs into his rather voluminous bag of stereotypes. Alan's mother is a frigid religious hysteric, compellingly played by Frances Sternhagen...
With consummate theatrical brio, Shaffer has attuned the audience to some of its deepest desires-sin, guilt, confession, atonement and a degree of redemption. Dare one say that he has also blinded the audience to his exaltation of deranged violence as religious passion and his derogation of civilizing reason as hollow passivity...