Word: zweig
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Taboo. Editor Leonard Zweig, 36, ransacks the scholarly journals and attends all the social-science conventions in a constant search for ideas that can be turned into Transaction articles. Since social scientists have a habit of talking in professional jargon and burying their leads somewhere in the middle of their stories, Zweig has to edit heavily. But there are few complaints. Wrote Raoul Naroll, professor of anthropology, sociology and political science at Northwestern University: "It is startling to see some of my thoughts coming back to me in plain English...
With exceptions such as Robert Graves (Goodbye to All That), Arnold Zweig (The Case of Sergeant Grischa), or Frederic Manning (Her Privates We), few survivors had the will or talent to write truly of the death of their generation, and with it the death of an old European society. It was left to the historians to assemble what they could from the records and statistics. At 76, Survivor Chapman is one of a dwindling group of 150 old comrades who share his memories. He is a historian (at the Universities of Leeds and Pittsburgh), but his academic work contains nothing...
...characters do not become repulsive--but the fault they share does. And Zweig radically alters one character, Volpone's toady Mosca, to further emphasize the central theme of money. As his name suggests, in Johnson's original he is a "fly"--engagingly ingenious and quickwitted, but as unscruplous as the rest. In the course of Zweig's play, however, he turns from his original admiration of Volpone's riches and wiles to disgust at the power of money; having inherited his master's fortune, he chooses in the closing scene of the play to share it with the people...
...directing the play, Morris Carnovsky has played up the broad comedy in Zweig's dialogue. Many gestures underline the characters' faults; for instance, "the dove" Colomba, a hypocritically pious and hypocritically faithful wife affectionately twirls her husband's hair into horns while avowing her undying love. Even the blocking is significant. In an opening scene, Mosca lies at his master's feet while they both drink a toast to Volpone; in the final scene, "the fox" grovels before Mosca...
...Zweig's Mosca poses serious problems for any actor: he must be portrayed straightforwardly in a cast of caricatured characters. After finessing a series of unsavory plots, he must win both the audience's admiration and their acceptance of his reformation. The boyish energy and joie de vivre which John Cunningham brings to the part help to solve these problems: he clearly enjoys his villainy because he enjoys quick-witted plots, particularly at the expense of villains, rather than because he shares the other charactrs' vices. Cunningham understandably has trouble with the rather mawkish conclusion, which Carnovsky has adapted from...