14-05-2009, 08:50 PM
Quote:Radio Times, Vol. 170, No. 2209, 10 March 1966, p. 27
Lee Oswald - Assassin
By Rudolph Cartier
Tonight’s Play of the Month* tells the story of the man who killed President Kennedy and is introduced here by its director Rudolph Cartier.
Nine years ago this month, my wife and I stopped overnight in Terni, a small Italian town about 100 kilometres north of Rome. It was a dull place at the foot of the Abruzzi mountains with a lot of industrial buildings – among them a small arms factory. I could not guess at that time that its vast store of surplus weapons from the second world war contained a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number 2766, built in 1940, which one day would fire the shots which would kill John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States.
Tonight’s play is about the man who fired these shots: Lee Harvey Oswald. It is based on Dallas – 22 November by the German author Felix Lutzkendorf. That work was written in the tradition of the modern German ‘documentaries’ like Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Joel Brand Story (a previous Play of the Month). Based on the Warren Report and other documentary evidence like Lee Oswald’s diary, Lutzkendorf’s play traced the life of the assassin from the time of his discharge from the U.S. Marines to the moment when he was killed by Jack Ruby.
How much filthy lucre, one can't help wondering, did the CIA splurge on the "artistic" campaign?
Quote:The Stage & Television Today, No. 4468, 1 December 1966, p. 13
Oswald Mystery Remains
By R.B.M.
Review of Michael Hastings’ play, “The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald.”
In the latest of the Hampstead Theatre Club series of plays and documentaries in Living Theatre, “The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald”, by Michael Hastings, speaks persuasively as Oswald the Guilty man, undoubted slayer of President Kennedy. At least, this is how the play seemed to me, though Mr. Hastings’ primary object is to build up a character study of Oswald and not to pronounce a verdict. This he does through an adaptation of extracts from the Warren Report and authentic newsreels. A character is built up, with an impression of the relationship between Oswald and his wife Marina and of the relationship of both with Oswald’s possessive mother. This is skilfully done, and up to a point is of interest. Yet it is a superficial account, as it must be when Oswald himself remains elusive and distant, a person of mystery whose life, motives and actions, and guilt or innocence are still being probed and questioned over the world.
Vital Figures
Oswald’s wife and mother emerge as much more real and vital figures than Oswald, mainly on account of the newsreels, though there are scenes during the Warren Commission that are very gripping. We see Oswald as a neurotic figure of small talent, determined somehow or other to impose himself on society, perhaps on history. He reminds one sometimes of William Joyce, another man of intentions compounded of good and evil, of undeveloped gifts, a misfit who never adjusted himself to being just that, or was able to find a way of expressing himself that would give him the place in the sun he longed for.
It is evident from photographs and reports that Lee Harvey Oswald had considerable charm, but this does not appear in Mr. Hastings’ play, nor in the dour, cold performance of Alan Dobie. The seething life beneath the surface of Oswald must have been considerable: there are glimpses of it in extracts from his writings, the words of a man of mind and thought, but malformed and too deeply involved with personal neurosis to be integrated into something worthwhile. We are given only a sketchy indication of this. Of course, Mr. Hastings’ cannot tell us anything about the mysteries concerning the actual assassination: how many shots were fired and by how many people; of Oswald’s connections with espionage and so forth. No one yet has solved any of these mysteries, at least publicly, and so Oswald himself becomes a bigger mystery every day.
“The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald” is nonetheless a fascinating piece of theatre-documentary. One expected more of Mr. Hastings but what he has done was well worth doing. It is brilliantly directed by Peter Coe and has two very fine, subtle, penetrating performances, by Bessie Love as Marguerite Oswald and Sarah Miles as Marina Oswald.
Cast:
The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald
Play by Michael Hastings. Presented in the Living Theatre Series by Hampstead Theatre Club on November 23. Designed by Michael Knight; lighting by John Harrison; stage director, Robert Gabriel.
Interrogation………….Ronan O’Casey
Marina Oswald……….Sarah Miles
Lee Harvey Oswald…..Peter Dobie
Marguerite Oswald…...Bessie Love
Directed by Peter Coe
[Photograph accompanying text is of Dobie holding the rifle and newspapers in back garden]