Word: blau
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Danton's Death, by Georg Buechner. Physically, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Lincoln Center Repertory's new home, is resplendent (see SHOW BUSINESS). Financially, this theater company is the richest in the U.S. Dramatically, it is bankrupt. Under its new directors, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, Lincoln Center begins its third season by patting together another of a seemingly endless series of dramatic mudpies...
...these themes might have stung the play into fitful life if it were not smothered in rhetoric. Danton inhales moral smog and exhales bombast. Herbert Blau is credited with translating the German; he has assuredly embalmed the English. Thanks to Blau, Robespierre has been given an outward resemblance to Barry Goldwater. This is a political subtlety fully worthy of the mentality that-in a since-deleted program note-linked Lyndon B. Johnson and Mao Tse-tung as fellow tyrants. Thanks to Blau, too, the direction resembles a wind machine blowing actors around like autumn leaves...
Orthodox women began to picket the Reb's house, shouting "Whore-lover!" and demanding to know why their daughters were not good enough for him. Summoned before the sect's religious court, Blau refused to abandon Ruth because his vow of betrothal to her could not be broken without her consent-something she would never give. Blau also raised a canny theological argument. His sexual organs, he explained, had been injured slightly by shrapnel during the siege of Jerusalem in 1948. Yet the law (Deuteronomy 23:2) says that no one who is "crushed or maimed...
Righteous Man. Unimpressed by this elaborate reasoning, the judges of the court ordered Blau to break off with Ruth. Instead, he quietly packed his few belongings and, despite his vow never to leave the holy city, fled to the safety of a more tolerant Orthodox community near Tel Aviv. There, last week, he and Ruth were married...
...Blau has said that he will never return to Jerusalem. It is just as well, since a majority of the Neturei Karta bitterly condemns him as a social outcast. But while other elders of the sect are squabbling to see who will replace the lost leader, a loyal handful of Blau's followers pray silently for his return. "In the Talmud," says one, "it is written that a city can breathe only through its righteous man. Now that Amram has left Jerusalem, I cannot sleep at night, for the city is no longer safe...