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THE PRICE finds Arthur Miller sermonizing again on his favorite texts of guilt, responsibility, and the way a man's identity is forged or warped by society's image of what he is or should be. The play is a museum piece out of the '30s, which Miller has never intellectually left, but the performances of Pat Hingle and Arthur Kennedy as sibling rivals blow away some of the dust.
JOE EGG. In moments of pain, a man may laugh, and in a desperate situation, he may take refuge from his grief in humor. In British Playwright Peter Nichol's comedy, Albert Finney and Zena Walker bounce from sadness to clowning and back again as the parents of a child described as a "wegetable."
PANTAGLEIZE. History is a farce, Michel de Ghelderode tells us in his play about how one sunny day a man looking for his destiny and a revolution looking for a leader collide and, due to circumstances beyond their comprehension or control, destroy each other.
ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD. To Shakespeare, Hamlet's university friends were nothing but functionaries, but to Tom Stoppard, they are pawns in a weighted chess match—for which they cannot even decipher the rules. Brian Murray, John Wood and Paul Hecht provide spirited, sophisticated acting.
Off Broadway
YOUR OWN THING takes the plot of Twelfth Night, shakes it up, spins it around until it spills out as a rock musical, put over with pizazz by an energetic and ingratiating young cast.
RECORDS
Opera
BELLINI: BEATRICE Dl TENDA (London; 3 LPs). Though Vincenzo Bellini's heroes and heroines usually deceive, accuse, torture and betray each other, they are always asked to sing like angels. As a result, many critics consider Bellini's operas featherweight musicianship, whose scores constantly belie his texts. Not so, for his bel canto idiom, which relies on "extended melodies" and tremendous vocal agility, can be far more meaningful and moving than the harshest forms of modern expressionism. Few singers in history have had the talent and temperament to bring out the best in Bellini's music. Among the few is Joan Sutherland, and in this album she portrays a typical Bellinian heroine who goes to her execution singing forgiveness of her treacherous husband. The supporting cast is quite adequate, and Sutherland's husband, Richard Bonynge, conducts the London Symphony with rare expertise.