THEATER, ETC.
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an admirally studied performance. On Lear's great age-with its egotism,
its awkward movements and appetites-he is especially good. But I can–
not see the point of his throwing so much of the role away, Lear's
madness for instance, by arbitrary vocal mannerisms that deadened the
full emotional power of his lines. The only performance which seemed to
me to survive this strange, crippling interpretation which Brook has
imposed on his actors--even, to thrive on it-was Irene Worth's com–
plex and partly sympathetic Goneril. Miss Worth appeared to have
searched every comer of her role, and unlike Scofield to have found
more, rather than less, than others had before.
BROUGHT VERY CLOSE
Brought very close to death by one world war,
my grandfather chose to die just in time
to avoid being killed by the next one.
My grandmother, wise after the bombing
and seeing benefit in everything,
said,
Just as well, tor he'd not have stood it.
She did, and showed everyone the neat hole
burned through the old table in the outside
back area by a hissing whitehot
incendiary bomb, but told no one except
my father how she calmly saved her home.
In the same night the proud church opposite
became a gutted smoking shell of stone:
her old eyes laughed as she drew the moral.
Susan Sontag
B. S.
Johnson
