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The Compromised Maiden |
| Section: THE ARTS / THEATER |
| Author: Herb Greer |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 7/1/1992 |
| Size: 2,097 Words, 12,342 Characters |
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Somerset Maugham once said that the flair for writing plays is not a literary talent; a playwright, in the proper sense of the word, is a man who maps a game, making a play as a cartwright makes a cart. Good writing is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition of such work. Sometimes the craftsman is severely limited in other respects (say in his supply of moral or political common sense); nevertheless, he is able to wright a stage work that can be made exciting, moving, funny, frightening, or just entertaining.
One obvious example of such an ambiguously talented artist is Harold Pinter at his best (though not in his later work, which ranges form shallow to cheap and pathetic). Another is the Chilean academic-writer Ariel Dorfman, whose play Death and the Maiden (dedicated to Pinter) is currently running in London and New York.
Dorfman fled his country after Salvador Allende was ousted, arriving in America via Amsterdam. An unrepentant Castroite and fiercely anti-Yanqui, he is nevertheless happy to work for the Yankee dollar as research professor of literature and Latin American studies at Duke University. Among his more notable works is the book How to Read Donald Duck, a hate-America rhapsody on ...
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...cely when he smiles. The effect is oddly snakelike, but he never overexploits this. On the contrary, he turns it around with a strong dose of fear and tension, until his astounded protests of innocence almost carry conviction. Best of all, he gives his role as the doctor a powerful core of strength that (as becomes obvious at the end) can serve an evil man as well as a decently innocent chap.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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