On
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley James Thurber's Empty Carnival and Hellman's Crowded Attic A Thurber Carnival. By James Thurber. Music by Don Elliott. Directed by Burgess Meredith. Presented by...
...does well with jolly Julian, but at the end—bedraggled, bloody and torn while the three women talk on and on without moving to help him —he sits so lugubriously that I was tempted to query: "Is there a trained nurse in the house...
...In her desperation, Carrie fastens upon Julian's feeble-minded wife who has recently learned, with Julian, the fervors of the flesh...
...Then the other sister, Anna, declares that Carrie's feeling is really incestuous desire...
...A little water might have cleansed him of the deed...
...His characters come to dance but linger for idle chatter...
...I think it's best to continue...
...This carnival has no calliope...
...She does not want to lose her protective hold...
...She jealously covets them, and Carrie plays upon her jealous fears to make her the instrument of Julian's destruction...
...Toys in the Attic...
...Carrie makes a remark about her father and Anna reminds her: "Papa died 22 years ago...
...you should have taken that up with him sooner...
...By Lillian Hellman...
...She really has three plays in one...
...When the sisters move up to the present, their dialogue continues to seek that underground (as opposed to attic) salt...
...Why did we have to purchase Louisiana, when we got all the other states for nothing...
...It's hard to see how any emotional depth can be dug out of the play's piled situations, which individually might be exciting but which cumulatively remind one of an acrobat trying to balance six chairs on top of one another...
...Then the moron, drawn on by Carrie, tells the boss, in one fell swoop, that his wife is (1) cheating on him with Julian, (2) cheating him in a $150,000 real estate deal, (3) really a Negress "passing" for white...
...This summary just scratches the surface of the New Orleans soil out of which this deadly nightshade has sprouted...
...Presented by Michael Davis, Helen Bonfils and Haila Stoddard...
...Carrie shouts at Anna: "Are you gonna eat...
...The toys in the attic are eventually destroyed by the bats in the belfry...
...Not only his dogs, but even his people are bare— at least on the ANTA curtain...
...You have to be absurder than Thurber to make a gay carnival...
...The imperturbable member of the family replies: "I always have...
...Directed by Arthur Penn...
...At the Hudson Theater...
...This benefactress has helped Julian to a real estate bonanza...
...The sisters seem to dwell upon the past...
...Thurber is troubled by the title of one: Grandma Was a Nudist...
...A Thurber is a man who bares nonsense...
...She's all I know about Bryn Mawr, and all I need to know...
...You hearken to several little "Fables for Moderns," less lively onstage than in print...
...You listen less attentively to six letters dictated by James Thurber and his publishers on the trail of some un-desired books that went astray...
...Loving sister Carrie, who has grown into an old maid sacrificing herself for her shiftless brother, Julian, is devastated when he turns out to be a success...
...One good idea for a play opens the evening...
...there is corn, but no pop...
...It shines with 30-watt talk, with a high power of inaction...
...The most earthly dialogue cannot bring such a story down to earth...
...Too much spoils the mixture...
...Jason Robards Jr...
...If Thurber's material is too thin, Lillian Hellman's is too thick...
...Presented by Kermit Bloomgarden...
...Poe's raven's "Nevermore" becomes "No More War...
...As the curtain falls, Julian puts his arm around his moron wife and staggers off to the bedroom to be happy ever after...
...Yet, despite all these complications, it starts slowly and spends some time even under the soil...
...That's really all you need to know about A Thurber Carnival...
...The moron's caustic and cryptic mother has been living with a Negro who is a cousin of Julian's benefactress...
...ATHURIBULER is a man who bears incense...
...At the ANTA Theater...
...The boss' quick action pulls the dream-castles down...
...But not all the Mississippi could wash clean the con-trivings that Lillian Hellman entangles in the drama...
...with her share of the profits, she hopes to escape from her hateful marriage to the bully boss of the town...
...this, of course, makes Carrie hate Anna...
...She didn't ever make me believe that all the odd people in Toys in the Attic could be joined in one supposedly realistic plot...
...They drop such gems as: "You may call it sleep-walking, but I say she's promiscuous...
...Thurber also presents an anthology that changes several poems' mournful endings...
...Thrashed within an inch of his life, broken in pocket and spirit, Julian eventually staggers home to the welcoming arms of protective Carrie...
Vol. 43 • March 1960 • No. 12
