Word: tribe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...body language of a culture, the gesticulations of its soul: in the profound formality of the Japanese, for example, or the surly and almost pathological caution of the Russians, it is possible to divine both personal and national character. Manners can be quite serious; the survival of the tribe always depends upon a kind of cooperative forbearance, which is the essence of manners. It is possible that the best manners have never prevented a man from being either an ass or a murderer. But Tish Baldrige would quarrel with that reading: to her, manners are a paradigmatic system of intelligent...
...much aggressiveness is exhausting. Today there seems a lot of evidence that Americans are tired of it. Stragglers are descending from the culture of the Ik (that east African hill tribe that, as Anthropologist Colin Turnbull found, amused itself by snatching food from the mouths of children and kicking the elderly into campfires). Remarks Judith Martin, who writes a satiric "Miss Manners" column for the Washington Post: "We're coming out of a psychologically self-oriented era. I think there's a craving for tradition, form, orderliness?and there's also a desire to be protected from everybody else...
...cast tries to make this thing go--certainly they try. The representation of the tribe stands out in this show--breaking the ponderous script. The cast, and special advisers to the show such as David Maybury-Lewis, professor of Anthropology, have put much time and effort into reproducing a cultural microcosm of an endangered tribe. The rituals and dances, the makeup and music, all conspire to take your mind off the surrounding baggage of the rest of the show...
...amount of dancing can distract the audience long enough. With all the problems of the world to deal with, the play just wanders like a chicken with its head cut off, until the end when all the principals, including the entire tribe, get blown away in less than 30 seconds. For two acts that seem to last longer than the Normandy Invasion, the audience must bear with what passes for dialogue composed of tribal myths, the ramblings of a sensitive and frustrated anthropologist, and the rantings of West and his engaging but strident captor, Carlos...
...hopelessly shallow part, although he occasionally stumbles over a Spanish accent that sounds too patently bogus for the audience to swallow. And Don Pullam comes up with a truly excellent performance in his one scene as an irredeemably culture-bound idiot-missionary bringing civilization to the heathen. The tribe of otherwise Stone-Age Indians singing "Yes, Jesus Loves Me"--in harmony--must be seen to be believed...