Word: simpletons
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...Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles (by George Bernard Shaw; Theatre Guild, producers). Fifty years ago last week a young man with lots of self-confidence sat down in the reading room of the British Museum to write his first play. He called it Widowers' Houses. George Bernard Shaw had already met with indifferent success as an orator, fictionist and Fabian Society member when Dramacritic William Archer presented him with a skeleton plot and persuaded him to turn his talents toward the theatre. It was not long before Shaw was back with the news that he needed more plot, having...
...Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, as usual, some painfully normal English folk were thrust into an eccentric setting, this time among the godlike inhabitants of an island just arisen from the sea. Strutting his pretty taste in paradox, Playwright Shaw again discussed polygamy, Empire, the Church, vegetarianism, Fascism, Indian Independence, medicine...
...prolog dragged into the first act and the first act into the second, The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles cast a thick pall over its audience. Here was not only nonsense, but tiresomely outmoded nonsense. Critical verdict was unanimous: The show should never have been staged...
...amiable racial controversies in The Bride of Torozko are decorated by observations like the publican's: "Everyone should be a Jew for four weeks. As for me, two weeks would be enough." It contains its complement of minor characters: a simpleton, a schoolmaster. Klari's girlfriend. If it bad been transplanted, like Sidney Howard's The Late Christopher Bean, instead of merely translated, by Ruth Langner, its merits as a play might have been more apparent...
...standard cinema Menace threatening him. It is his overeagerness. optimism and weakness for showing off before Minnie that get him into trouble. When Minnie is in danger he rescues her. Toward her he smiles a vast lopsided smile that wavers now and then with embarrassment, returns soon to the simpleton grin. He turns everything to use. He wrestles off the edge of a cliff, wrestles on in midair. Suddenly he looks down in horror, races back across space to the cliff, resumes wrestling with complete concentration. He flees interminably before a lion which loses its teeth when it nips...