Word: sours
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...pollution. After the map is burned totally black, a wind begins to scatter the ashes and a deep, doom-ridden voice warns: "Great civilizations decay from within. But it's up to you. Will history repeat itself?" This apocalyptic message is not the handiwork of aging cynics gone sour on the American dream but of six Naperville, Ill., teenagers. Invited by A. Eicoff & Co., a Chicago advertising agency, to dream up a 60-second public-service spot, the youngsters produced a stark, unadorned outcry against what they conceived to be a deadening decline in the quality of American life...
Rudyard Kipling, England's national, not to say nationalistic, poet, dismissed England's two national games very scornfully: "The flannelled fools at the wicket, the muddied oafs at the goals." There was a flavor of sour grapes there. Though most will admit the gentlemanly folly of cricket, the imputation of oafishness to football was, even in Kipling's own day, a bit anachronistic. Kipling seems to have had in mind the ancient bloody kickaround of the village green with a dead dog or severed head for ball, not the modern game that started to shape itself...
...singles later, four unearned runs had crossed the plate and Crimson right-hander Mike O'Malley had wasted a fine performance on a sour outcome...
...offered here will strike some listeners as benign imitations of Haydn and early Beethoven. Yet compared with the efforts of other American composers at the time, they are notable in their harmonic freedom, improvisatory style and whimsical subject matter. Epitaph on Joan Duff, for example, is the sweet-and-sour tale of a woman who took a pinch of snuff and sneezed herself to death. This is fascinating Americana, but it is a pity that printed texts of the songs are not provided...
After a few dirty jokes, some self-congratulatory reminiscences, and more than a couple of drinks, the reunion camaraderie begins to turn sour. First the boys turn against one another, and then they each turn inward and confess their own failures. Here, the actors' shortcomings are most noticeable. The self-confessions seem more like dispassionate monologues than the painful, soul-wrenching revelations that Miller intended them to be. During this confession scene the audience becomes confused as to how the characters are responding to one another. The focus of the play is diffused; the intensity of the drama is lost...