Word: themes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Like Saint Joan, it is a play about Catholicism and heresy, among other things. Could it be that the theme of religious faith inspired him to outdo himself? It is undeniable that, over the years, this theme has stimulated playwrights to remarkable and frequently their best work-from Prometheus Bound, Antigone and The Bacchae through Tartuffe, Athalie, Faust and Brand to Easter, Partage de Midi, Murder in the Cathedral, Galileo, Billy Budd, A Sleep of Prisoners, and Waiting for Godot...
...ostensible theme of the play is anti-semitism, but it's wider than that. It's a psycho-political horror story--rather like The Visit--and involves an enormous amount of character development on the part of one Andri (Carl Nagin). Except for Teacher (Marc Temin) and Barblin (Julie Tolliver) the other parts are basically designed for character actors...
...largely unaffecting and sometimes silly. Ancient Mariner style, Shaffer supplies his own albatross in the form of a narrator, always an ill omen that the drama will be becalmed. He harangues the listener on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the evils of war and plunder. His ultimate theme is that God is dead and life lacks meaning. Royal Hunt is a sort of Tiny Alice shorn of obscurantism and sent to Inca land...
Presently, Lipchitz is working on a 40-ft. sculpture to stand above the entrance to Columbia University's law school. To symbolize law and order, he chose the classical theme of Bellerophon grappling with the winged Pegasus to exemplify man taming the wild forces of nature. In their lumpy energy, the forms spew from the pedestal, masses stretching ever wider and spreading out into giant wings. As in the Duluth statue, Lipchitz is pursuing an ancient myth in his uniquely modern manner...
...woman in the audience, expecting paradox and paradigm, was disturbed and disappointed when she found instead this moral tragedy. "It's not modern drama," she complained to her husband. Indeed Hogan's Goat is old-fashioned: old fashioned in its religious theme, old-fashioned in its tight construction, old-fashioned in its immense dramatic power...