Word: swindon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...CONTRAST TO Burgoyne is the muddle-brained Major Swindon, who lacks the elevated aristocratic perspective. Edelman has done well to cast William Young in the role: Young not only pronounces his lines with an ugly pigheadedness; he even looks like a swine...
Besides, while the bicentennial is a spectacle that begs our involvement, Shaw cunningly obliges us to distance ourselves from the illusion he presents. At one point, after Swindon, in the face of disastrous war news, declares his faith in his countrymen's devotion. Burgoyne cuttingly asks him if he's writing a melodrama. With all this self-consciousness, it's not too surprising that The Devil's Disciple never quite compels our belief. But neither does it matter, since the Summer School Repertory Theater, inaugurating its season with polish and style, so winningly compels our laughter...
...Bristol, a daily torrent of 50 million gallons of wastes poisoned the once sweet Avon River. At Blackpool, raw sewage spewed directly into the Irish Sea. Eleven acres of low-lying country by the Ray River were flooded with Swindon's flushings, which then seeped perilously close to Oxford's water supply. In London, most of the city's daily output of 570 million gallons was kept under control, but two tributaries of the Thames flowed with filth...
Wyman Pendleton contributes a deft cameo as a lawyer who revels in hair-splitting; similarly with the paunchy Cockney sergeant of John Tillinger. Joseph Maher gets considerable mileage out of Major Swindon, who-echoing the Queen of Hearts' exclamation in Alice in Wonderland: "Sentence first-verdict afterwards"-proclaims, "We have arranged [the hanging] for 12 o'clock. Nothing remains to be done except to try him." At one point Shaw has him say, "You insolent-," breaking off after the adjective. Here Maher provides the noun "bastard"-which Shaw likely had in mind but could not have got by the stage...