Word: laocoon
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...mercy of a muddled playwright and an arty director, a not untalented cast was doomed from the start. Apparently assuming that twisted bodies mean twisted souls, they writhed like the Laocoon group. A revolutionary solemnly announced that only a small part of the human race have their heads cut off. The villain twitched about the stage like Mephistopheles with a tic. The audience half expected Fannie Brice to burst in, roll her eyes, and mutter as she did of yore: "It is always c-o-old in Roosia...
...earnest. Heartbreak House has the deceptive structure of an accordion: pushed in, it looks like a congested comedy of eccentrics; but pulled out to its full length, with Captain Shotovers booming prophecies, with its stabs of pathos, with its acrobats who suddenly are transformed into an anguished Laocoon group, it utters an almost Biblical warning. As for the "timeliness" that the Mercury Theatre noted, there are speeches like Shot-over's: "The Captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditchwater; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. She [the ship] will strike and sink and split...
...London three statesmen have been wrestling with dollars, pounds and francs as the mythical Trojan priest Laocoon and his two sons once wrestled with snakes which crushed them for the crime of defying Apollo. Recently the London News Chronicle, which favors cartoons of classic inspiration, printed a Laocoon group (see cut) in which the currency serpents coil around British Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, James M. Cox, U. S. Delegate and Chairman of the World Conference Monetary Committee, and French Finance Minister Georges Bonnet. Last week, a few hours after the Conference adjourned (see p. 16), Chancellor Chamberlain...