Three Plays about Crime and Criminals [antikvár]

THREE PLAYS ABOUT CRIME AND CRIMINALSis in The American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) of Distinguished Plays.ANTA is an organization of theatre services, information and activities, congressionally chartered and independently financed by its members and interested donors. Its aim is . . to extend the living theatre beyond its present limitations by bringing the best in the theatre to every state in the Union."INTRODUCTIONJoseph Kesselring was bom in New York City on June 21, 1902. From 1922 to 1924 lie was a professor of music in Newton, Kansas. From 1925 to 1933 he was a short-story writer, an actor and a producer of vaudeville sketches. He began his career as a writer of full-length plays with Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men (1933), followed by There's Wisdom in Women (1935), Cross-Town (1937), Maggie McGiUigan (1942) and Four Twelves Are 48 (1950).Arsenic and Old Lace, imaginatively directed by Bretaigne Windust and skillfully produced by the eminent playwrights Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, was produced on August 18,1941, at the Fulton Theatre (now the Helen Hayes) and ran for three and a half years. The play repeated the length of run (1332 performances) in London starting in December, 1942.Brooks Atkinson in The New York Times, August 19,1941, stated: "Let's not exaggerate! At some time there may have been a funnier murder charade than Arsenic and Old Lace, which was acted at the Fulton last evening. But the supposition is purely academic. Joseph Kesselring has written one so funny none of us will ever forget it." On the same date John Mason Brown wrote in the New York Evening Post: "The evening is at once so side-splitting and terrific that it can be guaranteed to make even dramatic critics care about the theatre.""And that indeed is the joke which the author prolongs with wonderful ingenuity through three whole acts. Arsenic and Old Lace is a prime expression of the extravaganza and burlesque in which the Americans excela Runyon plot in a Mary Petty setting," remarked New Statesman and Nation on January 2,1943.The January 13, 1943, Sketch added: "The grim joke is really funny, and the perfect timing of the accomplished cast makes this fantastic skit on thrillers go with tremendous vim."3