Word: welter
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...sidestepped the lachrymose aspects of the old maid's condition, and he placed a buoyant comic balloon in the middle of this short play (presented in an hour and a half with no intermission). The arrival of Ceil for a hostile dinner with Catherine and Anna sets loose a welter of tensions and animosities. Anna, you see, has "flipped," committed a sexual act, undefined but traumatic, with an adolescent hoodlum at her school. She barrages Catherine with demands, seeks protection against the outside world (through a pure vegetarian diet, through hypochondriac fantasies about death). Catherine "drinks a little" to ease...
...Macy's angel, that one. The awe that angels inspired in those who saw them, the terrible sense of epiphany, the momentary contact with God's blazing ambassador-all this has been lost in a welter of tinsel and feathers. The tongues of angels now speak with the voice of Muzak. It was not always so. Angels have an older ancestry than Christianity itself, and the most copious sources for named angels are not the New or even the Old Testament but Talmudic and Mohammedan writings. Still, for nearly 2,000 years the belief in angels was vital...
Together they comb the East Village for Compton's daughter and end up wallowing in a smoky pad with a group of hippies. Joe looks at the welter of nude flesh in wonder. "This is an orgy, ain't it?" he asks (pronouncing "orgy" with a hard g). But the kids taunt them mercilessly, steal their wallets and take off for a commune. Joe and Bill track down the youngsters in a closing scene of such horror that Joe must surely rank in impact with Bonnie and Clyde...
...Murder in the Cathedral is what to do with the actors while they go about the business of hitting the audience with line after line of great poetry. Very little action is called for in the play itself, and its potential impact could very easily be lost in a welter of words. What Mr. Wheeler has done is use the movements of the actors throughout the course of the play as another means of expressing the many subconscious elements implicit in the characters' speeches. The actors make full use of the beautiful chapel in which the play is performed, often...
Even for countries without border problems, the very welter of tribes in most of Africa's new nations presents a formidable problem. In Tanzania, for example, there are 120 tribal groups speaking at least as many distinct languages. Yet many African countries may be better off with many small, weak tribes than with a few strong rival groups. In the early '60s in Rwanda, the squat Bahutu literally cut the tall, stately Watutsi down to size by whacking their legs off. Thus ended the age-old Watutsi hegemony over the Bahutu. Two smoldering guerrilla wars are ethnic...