Word: virginals
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wonder. The work is an unabashed sex comedy, a Myra Breckenridgian imbroglio of ungodly carryings-on among ancient deities. Cavalli's music floats along, endless melodious recitative, rich with strings, harps and harpsichord. The music makes even a blush-laden plot acceptable: Jove desires nubile Calisto, a virgin in the temple of Diana. Figuring correctly that Calisto will do anything Diana tells her, old Jove transforms himself into a replica of that bosomy goddess. Meanwhile the real Goddess Diana is cavorting with a local shepherd. After her gay, if confusing, romance, poor Calisto is turned first into a bear...
...young Roman, Hero, loves a pretty virgin, Philia, who, alas, is sold to an army captain. The job of finagling her away falls to the young man's personal slave who hopes to gain his freedom by getting the girl. Boisterous Psuedolus does his best for his master Hero in the face of inumerable obstacles--Hero's horny but performance-conscious father, the virgin's scruples about... wine, the bumbling transvestitism of a slave in cahoots. His retreat-ridden advance to freedom is the center of the musical...
...chief slave, Hysterium, at the beleagured household, Thomas Hann clowns in an epicene manner with impressive grace. Raymond Huessey and Mace Rosenstein are both excellent in their respective roles of the father, Senex, and the money-loving procuror, Marcus Lycus. As the self-admiring captain hot for his expensive virgin, Nicholas Weyman well strikes an extravagantly pompus mien. (The talents of the procuror's wares are best judged by the individual spectator...
Pseudolus' young master Hero (John Hansen) is piteously in love with the beauteous virgin Philia (Pamela Hall). If Pseudolus can secure her for Hero, he will receive his freedom. The plot tangles, twists, thickens, quickens, down alleys and up roofs, through brothels of spicy beauties and manses of spiky matrons, leaving behind a car nage of laugh-splintered ribs. Salve, Forum, et in arena hilaritatis! lo triumphe...
Finally, it is unclear that racism or bigotry lies mainly in the province of the lower middle class. A number of recent studies have demonstrated that racism--outside of the South--manifests itself at comparable rates in all classes. So as All in the Family tiptoes into virgin territory, it is dangerous if allowed to stand alone. The show feeds the smug, self-satisfied feelings of middle and upper-class audiences--who are as statistically as racist as Archie--but do not express their bogotry in such raw terms. Perhaps it is all right to have Archie worry about...