Simply Streep is your premiere source on Meryl Streep's work on film, television and in the theatre - a career that has won her three Academy Awards and
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Major Barbara
May 02 - May 06, 1973
| Yale Repertory Theatre
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Shaw has crafted an almost perfectly balanced play with the potential for being a great piece of entertainment despite – and possibly because of – all the philosophical oratory (quotations of Plato and such) that interchanges on the stage. Too bad that the Drama School production seems not to realize some of the potential. One problem – and I suppose a perennial problem of opening nights – is lines. It’s distracting when an actor forgets them or slips over them, and positively destructive when such lingual miscalculation obliterates the wit of someone like Shaw. After all, “Cry havoc and let poop the dogs of war!”? Another problem is screaming. It is often said in drama workshops that it is not a good idea to put nodes on one’s vocal chords, especially when the actor has to go out of character to do it. This occurs in at least one instance, when Sir Andrew uncharacteristically begins to rand and rave about the meaning of real life in the third act. Here, I guess, my quarrel is with the director. One the whole, though, “Major Barbara” in the experimental theater is worth your time, even though the experiment turns out to be a noble one.