Word: sheridan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...fellow named Allardyce Nicoll once said of Sheridan's School For Scandal: "Sometimes we are inclined to be surfeited with too much of these intellectual fireworks." The Brattle Theatre's modern adaptation of the late 18th Century comedy of manners is a display of fireworks--intellectual and non-intellectual--that would make Mr. Nicoll turn over in his grave...
Whether the Brattle players transformed Sheridan's satire into a 20th Century fantasy because of a coherent dramatic theory or merely because it afforded an excellent vehicle for their own wild shenanigans is hard to say. I suspect it was a combination of the two. Certainly the sterility and hypocritical morality of Sheridan's London is analogous to literary theories of modern society. The company also apparently feels that the theatrical forms of the two ages are similar; in both centuries there is what Sheridan himself admitted was "an excessive opulence of wit," a lack of natural character delineation...
Unfortunately The School For Scandal is, structurally speaking, one of the most complex of Sheridan's plays. There is a constant interweaving of characters, and even in its original staging the plot would be sufficiently hard to follow. With all the stylistic frills that the Brattle has appended for its own mystical purposes, it becomes practically impossible to unravel the play's intrigues...
...Blue Angel, one block north, has just imported Charles Trenet, the new Maurice Chevalier. Cafe Society, down at Sheridan Square, has a trio of Art Tatum, Slam Stewart, and Everett Barksdale...
...Fort Sheridan, Ill., Inductee Donald Nothdorft, for three years the "Human Cannonball" for a circus, told officers: "I don't think I want to be in the artillery...