MacBird! by Barbara Garson has been awaited with all the fierce anticipatory noises surrounding a tumbrel arriving at the guillotine. Long before the play's off-Broadway opening last week, an honor guard of coterie intellectuals, including Critic Dwight Macdonald and Yale Drama School Dean Robert Brustein, went into tub-thumping ecstasy over MacBird, which promised a dramatic severing of President Johnson's head. In addition, it capitalized emotionally on a winter of public discontent with L.B.J.—the poll-recorded loss of favor with the electorate, the supposed credibility gap, concern about Viet Nam, Johnson's embroilment with the...
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