Word: witched
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...plot is poetically simple. Thomas Mendip, a soldier returned from the wars in Flanders, comes to Cool Clary and finds a witch hunt in progress. Sick of man's inhumanity to man, and without the slightest notion who the witch is, he creates a diversion for her benefit. He describes himself as the murderer of two village characters and demands that he be hanged forthwith. Then the witch turns out to be beautiful. That the beautiful Jennet Jourdemayne and Soldier Thomas fall in love, and that their love laughs at faggots and hangmen, are matters that Poet Fry makes...
...real triumph of this brief, flashing play lies in its speech, a combination of unabashed medieval richness and 20th Century directness. When the mayor's sister, hearing the bells of the witch hunt, casually remarks, "Oh! - dear; another?" Thomas Mendip is appalled and angered by her lack of heart...
...Russia to Chicago to conduct the premiere of his new opera. But sad news awaited him. The Chicago Opera Co., which had commissioned the work, just couldn't make it come off. It was a silly story-about a morose young prince who, under the spell of a witch, falls in love with three oranges. And both on the stage and in the pit, it seemed to be continually poking grand opera in the ribs...
...play-or rather, an opera within a play. What still seemed brand new was the way he used his chorus as a stage audience. Dressed in evening clothes and seated in boxes on either side of the stage, the chorus not only hisses the villain and boos the witch, but actually rushes onstage at one point and hustles the old crone off. When two of the orange-housed princesses die of thirst in the desert, the stage audience saves the third by rushing to the rescue with a fire-bucket of water brought in from the wings. Biggest laugh: Basso...
Jennet: (the witch) What can we see in this light...