On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley A French Brothel and an American Presidential Campaign The Balcony. By Jean Genet. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. Directed by Jose Quintero. Presented by Lucile...
...he hates even the smallest sign of political chicanery...
...In a suite two floors away, ruthless candidate Joe Cantwell is also smiling...
...He greets all comers with a smile and a joke, or an applied quotation many will not recognize, as "A candidate should not mean but be...
...At the Morosco Theater...
...Those predatory teeth...
...Madame Irma has made it a very profitable whorehouse—the term is hers—by specializing in perversions...
...The wife of the two candidates rally to the flag in equally contrasted ways...
...These officials' costumes all have shoes with soles ten inches high, so that the men loom over us...
...Their symbolic sense becomes clear when a revolt outside the brothel bursts in, and the Chief of Police and the Royal Chamberlain make Madame Irma the new Queen...
...Use chop sticks in private, if you wish, but wait until you're in to talk recognition...
...And don't do too little, like Mrs...
...he has ordered his own mausoleum...
...After all, Grace Coolidge about kept to the middle...
...The Chief of Police seeks immortality...
...The Best Man...
...Seems to me there are two Stevensons, also...
...Directed by Joseph Anthony...
...For his statue, he considers a giant phallus: "It's the tone of the age...
...Roosevelt...
...JEAN GENET, of the French literary avant-guard, having spent much of his life in reformatories and prisons, sets his play The Balcony in a brothel...
...And the Old Man of the Party laments the lapse of God...
...The Best Man begins with a swirl of reporters, as William Russell swings into his hotel suite in primary-town Philadelphia...
...He wants to be President...
...We watch, in succession, men who get pleasure from dressing as a bishop who hears a penitent, as a judge who has a pretty "criminal" whipped, and as a general who plays ride a cock-horse...
...By Gore Vidal...
...it seems the big thing this year...
...Almost every aspect of politics gets its jibe...
...Then it'll be "Cantwell for President...
...Especially effective are the tactics of the shrewd ex-President, a kingmaker withholding his nod as he tests the two aspirants...
...Buried beneath his political know-how is a core of something finer...
...For he has "the dirt" on Bill: psychiatric reports of Bill's nervous breakdown, "paranoid type, suicidal tendencies," which he intends to release to the delegates just before the balloting...
...I'm always hemming and whoring...
...Bill's wife is given some good counsel: "When you're the First Lady, don't do too much, like Mrs...
...Eisenhower...
...When he quotes Bertrand Russell, and a reporter asks: "Wasn't he kicked out of City College...
...For our candidate has a conscience...
...Russell reflects that the public is beginning to favor rich men in office...
...when the ruthless man declares that the end justifies the means, the former President points out that in the continuity of life "there are no ends, only means...
...the morgue is disinfected...
...The three pretenders then become actual bishop, judge and general: The world, as Genet sees it, is just a larger brothel...
...he is advised...
...Bill retorts: "Yes, but only for moral turpitude, not for incompetence as a philosopher...
...The author's name, Genet, means "broom": this one has certainly raised a lot of dirt...
...In private, he asks: "Is there anything more indecent than a smile...
...Presented by the Playwright's Company...
...Lay off Red China...
...It would, how-aver, not be fair to compare The Balcony to the morgue...
...Around the vivid clash of the thoughtful intellectual and the unscrupulous self-made man, Gore Vidal has wrapped a keen examination of political maneuvers...
...An excellent cast, headed by Melvyn Douglas as Russell and Lee Tracy as the ex-President, with Frank Lovejoy as the unscrupulous Cantwell, and Leora Dana and Kathleen Maguire as the wives, helps make The Best Man the best play of 1960...
...In the last scene there is a corpse, onto which the Chief of Police nonchalantly tosses his hat, and as he leaves reaches into the coffin to take it again...
...The rapid flow of the play sweeps lines of interesting thought past us almost before we can snatch them...
...Presented by Lucile Lortel and (by and at) the Circle in the Square...
...they're not so likely to raid the public treasury...
...when he was running, they "used to pour God over everything like catchup...
...Asked for comment, Queen Irma says: "I don't know how to talk...
...When his opponent pontificates, Russell punctures the typical candidate pronouncement with: "You state the obvious with a sense of discovery...
...They consider a Catholic for Vice President...
Vol. 43 • April 1960 • No. 16
