Word: hysteria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spite of this immature approach to the subject that Mr. Cutler chose to pursue, the last two sections show that he has a fine control of the resources of an orchestra. The orchestral song based on a death in wartime is stunning and gripping in its controlled hysteria. The H.R.O. and Mr. Senturia acquitted themselves well as they put the often unrelated elements of Mr. Cutler's score into shape. The soloists, Jenneke Barton and Thomas Beveridge, kept on pitch throughout and negotiated their at times pointlessly demanding music with skill...
...other major performers are mostly wooden or inconsistent. In the first act, Daniel Markowich (Osvald Alving) fails to suggest any of the intense fear which must haunt him. After one convincing scene--when he tells of his disease--Markewich's performance again trails off until, toward the end, his hysteria occasionally appears a joke...
...little sense of political responsibility they have. Once again the colony's leading political party, Abako, was up to its old tricks of playing upon the superstitions of the ignorant. In the port of Matadi, 160 miles southwest of Léopoldville, 400 Congolese were suddenly overcome by hysteria after listening to a sermon by one of the many "apostles" of Kibangu, a "black savior" who died in 1951 but is expected by his followers to return one day and drive out the white man. The result was a pitched battle with black Congolese police, which left six Africans...
Written during the McCarthy era, the original play dealt with the mass hysteria caused by one demogogue playing on the fears of the people. The political overtones of the play were obvious (which is probably why Hollywood has never attempted to make a movie of it), but the play was more than a mere social pamphlet. It centered on the moral struggle of its farmer-hero John Proctor, who, accused of "consorting with the Devil," chooses to die rather than confess to a crime he has not committed...
Report to Uhlan: "This is the worst book I have ever edited. It is incoherent, illiterate, without sense, reason, or simple understanding . . . This is literally an insane book on the need of men to look to God . . . It should be buried quickly, for the insanity and hysteria and illiteracy make it a menace to Exposition Press...