JEZEBEL'S HUSBAND and THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

by Robert Nathan ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 9, 1953

Novelist and poet Nathan turns his hand to playwriting with some success. Jezebel's Husband, a tragi-comedy on man's search for truth and righteousness, draws on a patchwork of real and imaginary biblical situations for its plot. Egotistic, domineering Jezebel is the wife of Jonah who in his middle years is enjoying the position of a favored prophet who has been telling people what they want to hear. But amidst luxury and his wife's advice he is not really happy, and when confronted by threatened invasion from Nineveh (which country he had successfully reprimanded in his youth), the zeal of the young prophet Micah, and a visit from Judith whom he loved in his youth- he is persuaded to take to the desert again. Some pretty pungent scenes in a play with skillfully rendered types and anachronisms to make it appeal to modern readers. Not as successful,- the second play is about Hollywood and uses shifting spots on a single stage to achieve different settings. Briefly, it is Anna, a commissary-to-set waitress who is the sleeping beauty and who is ""awakened"" by a bored but handsome roue of an actor and a devilish director who thinks the affair might make her a star. Albert, a young sub-assistant is jilted by Anna's actions, gets violent, but is partly reconciled when she thinks things out for herself and comes to a new realization of life. Both plays absorbing, thoughtful.

Pub Date: March 9, 1953

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1953

Categories: NONFICTION