Word: tales
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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With a refreshing lack of pretension, the Children's Theatre has sparked Lucy Barry's adaptation of the old tale with bright, colloquial dialogue, sprightly music, and some very funny, original characterizations. The result, skillfully directed by Don Adams, is a warm-hearted, fast-paced spectacle of childish confusion and adult good fun. The play's facetious lines and well-tempered slapstick will undoubtedly appeal to sophisticated audiences; one hopes that the youngsters will be equally amused...
Moved by his tale, the disciplinary committee put Kelvin on probation for two years. In Manhattan, meanwhile, Entrepreneur Akers blithely brushed off Kelvin's charges, called him "a little Scottish country doctor who was scared to death in this country...
...Henry Wade (241 pp.; Macmillan; $2.75). After the wealthy widow marries the fortune-hunting gambler, does she fall or is she pushed from the second-floor landing to her death? One of those expert British suspense jobs, the story moves suavely on two levels; a seemingly slow-paced tale set in hunting country, it crackles with undercurrents of blackmail, violent passion and murder. Topnotch in its class, it has the season's best double-whammy ending...
This end, like all of the tale, is grim. There is almost no change of tone and no relief in the story, and in this certainly lies much of its oppressiveness. "Our tale begins in darkness and ends in darkness," Prokosch begins, and he pursues the sordid, the unhealthy, and the cruel throughout the book with what appears to be a devotion to some mistaken ideal of honesty. The only other explanation of his over-frequent descriptions of torture and disease would be an intent to please or attract readers through their sheer sadism...
...Tale for Midnight recounts the history of a crime, and does it well. Beyond this it can claim little distinction. Frederic Prokosch is a good craftsman with words in their immediacy, but only that. His book as a whole lacks vitality and meaning...