Author: Raymond J. Pentzell (Raymond J. Pentzell)

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Modernism’s Stage Debut

For the critic, the sad inevitabilities are death and taxonomy. He cannot avoid genres, isms, and zeitgeists, unless he wants the past to be unintelligible and the present to seem as random and strung out as an evening of “performance art.” “Victorian art” did pass away, and its heirs were “modernists.” While reports of modernism’s...

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Stage Props & Program Notes

Eugene O’Neill’s life was a purgatory, as he never ceased informing us. His final plays, those written or revised from 1939 on, leave us with a vision of him plodding at last toward the top of that inverted mountain, the man emerging from his lifelong torments and the artist from his befuddlements. O’Neill is unique...

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Old Changelings and New Mutants

To focus some thoughts on current trends in American theatrical style—as distinct from play writing—it may help to use a telescoping lens to zero in on a classic play, not itself American. The play I have in mind is one that was recently produced not in the bazaars of New York but in one of...