Word: wakely
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...most people the mention of Finnegans Wake suggests a trackless forest of tangled Joycean jargon, huge, ambiguous, largely inexplicable, and hence poorly suited to stage production. But the present Poets' Theatre version proves that quite the opposite is true. Digging out some of the book's principal themes--not all, to be sure--and taking the best advantage of its circular form and the musical quality of Joyce's language, the Poets have arrived at a truly successful adaptation which never fails to be entertaining...
...thematic complexities, with their continual restatement in terms of almost everything in myth and history. Miss Manning has been wise in not attempting this, for the result could only be tedious and disastrously confusing. Her arrangement retains a circular form, opening and closing with the members of the wake gathered about the omnipresent coffin-cradle of Finnegan. She has made Shem the Penman spokesman for her piece, and although his antithetical brother Shaun is absent as an explicit character, he does appear in his incarnations of Ondt and Jaunty Jan during the H. C. Earwicker dream sequences. The theme...
...success of Miss Manning's adaptation depends very strongly on skillful and imaginative presentation. Here also the group is astoundingly adept. It would be hard to imagine lines demanding closer attention in delivery than those of Finnegans Wake, yet the cast handles them with universal aplomb. Breaking up the speeches among various characters on the stage does away with the monologue effects one is liable to get in reading, when often the various speakers are practically indistinguishable. Moreover, though many of Joyce's visual puns are lost in the transition to the stage, the actors' interpretations through pantomime and inflection...
...shoved onstage as a result of a hit record, without any other experience, Sammy Davis Jr. is a seasoned pro. His dancing is a study of fine rhythm and agility, his timing precise, his ad libs are deft. But he says: "I never studied anything I do. I just wake up in the morning thinking it would be good to do Bing Crosby...
...intruder pounded on the locked front door for several minutes, then entered through a rear basement door by breaking a pane and opening it from within. He went at once to the third floor, opening and slamming every door. Mrs. Heddy Schunscher, the Holmes Housemother, rang the "wake up" bell, and the invader directed traffic on the third floor as the girls crowded to the stairways...