Word: classical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Julie Harris as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (NBC). In the semi-modern classic that for years was regarded as a ringing plea for woman's emancipation, she was superb as the child-wife who is treated as a mindless, soulless plaything by a priggish husband (Christopher Plummer). But while Actress Harris-kittenish, hectically gay and finally rebellious-could break out of Nora's plush Victorian prison, she could not wholly shake off the stilted language and obtrusive 19th century stagecraft which Adaptor James Costigan took over from Ibsen...
...noted American poet and fearless antagonist of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, John Ciardi. "Archibald MacLeish's J.B. is great poetry, great drama, and--as far as my limitations permit me to sense it--great stagecraft," he proclaimed in the opening sentence of his article, "The Birth of a Classic." A prefatory note explained that SR's poetry editor was saluting the work "in the deep conviction that it is not only an intrinsically great play but that it sets the model from which great poetic drama may hope to flow in our times." And, indeed, Ciardi contended that "MacLeish's great...
...magazine critics had time for second thoughts but most of them joined in with the newspaper hymnsinging. Marya Mannes of the Reporter complained about Hingle's naturalistic acting in the title role--"This is a classic role that demands a classic actor with the kind of diction only the classicists of the theatre possess"--and would have preferred to see "Olivier or Richardson" in "MacLeish's exalted poem"; but she had no reservations about the play itself--"I know of no other American poet who could write this legend in such noble and flexible language or maintain, as he does...
Father Fitzpatrick somehow reminded me of Father Flanagan of Boys Town, who once uttered that classic absurdity: "There are no bad boys...
...Carney Show (NBC, 8:30-10 p.m.). Thornton Wilder's modern classic, Our Town, with Carney as the stage manager who tells all because he knows...