Word: abelard
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...Warsaw, on 20th December 1963," Kolakowski impersonates Satan in a remarkable exhibition of incontestable sophistry; he argues for his own existence in a discredulous age along the lines that his very strength lies in the fact that he does not exist. In other soliloquies, notably in one given by Abelard's Heloise in defense of the flesh and in another given by a student of sexual exorcism, Kolakowski indicts Christianity for its contempt of the body, and by implication, of this world. While this second section is not so successful nor so concise as the first, it is more ambitious...
...theologian, 37 and virginal, who falls in love with his aptest pupil, the 17-year-old niece of a canon of Notre Dame, has a child by her, marries her and then is castrated by the hired thugs of the irate and possibly incestuous-minded uncle? After all that, Abelard and Heloise live in undying love in separate cloisters. Erich Segal, meet Playwright Ronald Millar, your British opposite number...
...really determine whether Love Story has saturated the lovestory market. If not, Abelard & Heloise may glow at the box office despite its sallow dramatic complexion. "Inspired" by Helen Waddell's novel Peter Abelard, and the love letters of Heloise and Abelard, the play actually belongs in the company of operettas, historical romances and three-handkerchief movies. Critical duty virtually stops there; the people who like this sort of thing do so invariably, and the people...
Diana Rigg as Heloise and Keith Michell as Abelard are lovers not so much star-crossed as celluloid-spliced. A playgoer might even feel that he was watching an ad trailer from the film-to-be. Thrill to A & H in a nude scene played in one-watt lighting. Chill as A is symbolically castrated by some sinister leprechauns left over from a ballet of yesteryear. Hiss the uncle. Chortle with a tipsy canon (Ronald Radd) and a tipsier abbess (Jacqueline Brookes). So much for medieval color. In dialogue. Playwright Millar has spared his audience the one line that...
...mental interior, reflecting on the roles of memory, meditation, myth and the male-female relationship. She successfully blended them all at the beginning of her 21-week Manhattan season in a new work called A Time of Snow, a somber retelling of the love and tragedy of Heloise and Abelard. The Graham dancers embraced the angular and knotty choreography with the familiar and loving assurance of craftsmen bred for their task...