The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Hitchcock surrounding himself with beauty on the set of The Lady Vanishes, 1938

Hitchcock on the set with Dame May Whitty and Emile Boreo

Hitchcock on the set with Margaret Lockwood

Hitchcock with Margaret Lockwood

Hitchcock cameo

THE LADY VANISHES            A-                

Great Britain  (97 mi)  1938  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

I don’t see how a thing like cricket can make you forget seeing people.

—Charters (Basil Radford)

When one thinks of Hitchcock’s greatest films, they usually revolve around Shadow of a Doubt (1943), NOTORIOUS (1946), STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951), REAR WINDOW (1954), Vertigo (1958), NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959), and Psycho (1960), where his British films rarely enter into the discussion.  British film critic David Thomson, for instance, acknowledges that “Hitchcock in England is a career unto itself,” but does not include any of the British films on his list of the director's greatest works.  David Denby writing for The New Yorker wrote, “In recent decades, critical consensus has settled on the American movies from the fifties.”  That means Dial M for Murder (1954), The Trouble With Harry (1955), The Wrong Man (1956), The Birds (1960), and even Rebecca (1940) are often mentioned before his British classics The Lodger (1927), Blackmail (1929), THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), and what is arguably his most definitively British film, THE LADY VANISHES (1938).  Ironically the film originated with an American director, Roy William Neill, for a film called The Lost Lady, produced by Edward Black, where a crew was sent to former Yugoslavia for initial background shots, but the police interfered, thinking Yugoslavs were not being well-portrayed in the film, so they were booted out of the country.  A year later, Black offered the film to Hitchcock, which features an exquisite screenplay enhanced by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder, who turned it into one of his best British films. Hitchcock actually received a cable in the middle of shooting this film from producer David O. Selznick in America asking him to come to Hollywood to direct a picture and the rest is history.  Unlike Fritz Lang’s master criminal in his thrillers who has the capability to cloud other men’s minds through hypnosis and disguise, creating hallucinogenic qualities, Hitchcock often uses a luring spirit from beyond the grave, such as the ghostly presence of Rebecca (1940), or Madeleine/Carlotta in Vertigo (1958), Mrs. Bates in Psycho (1960), not to mention the lingering presence of the cadavers in ROPE (1948), REAR WINDOW (1954), and The Trouble With Harry (1955).  Meeting Hitchcock in Hollywood a few years after THE LADY VANISHES, British-American actor and film producer John Houseman found him to be “a man of exaggeratedly delicate sensibilities, marked by…the scars from a social system against which he was in perpetual revolt and which had left him suspicious and vulnerable, alternately docile and defiant.”  Hitchcock was born and raised in London, where according to author and academic Charles Barr in his Criterion essay, The Lady Vanishes: Tea and Treachery: 

The son of a tradesman, Hitchcock was exposed to the subtle brutalities of the English class system from an early age, both in his own education and as a precocious London theatergoer fascinated by the work of such anatomists of English society as Shaw and John Galsworthy.  Like any British filmmaker of the period, he could hardly have avoided class issues when he began as a director in 1926, and his films show a consistent sharpness in handling them, in particular the tensions created by relationships across a class divide, as in the silent films The Lodger (1927) and The Manxman (1929) and the early sound films Murder! (1930) and The Skin Game (1931).

While Hitchcock was a Londoner at heart, he was also European and cosmopolitan, traveling frequently whenever possible, influenced both by key elements within his national culture as well as formative cinematic influences from elsewhere, such as German expressionism, Hollywood cinema, and Soviet montage.  So it should perhaps come as no surprise that this film is a beautiful composite of these various cultural influences, adapted from the 1936 novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, where the film is a romantic espionage thriller that was largely a metaphor for the peace that was about to vanish in Europe.  The film was made in the same year as Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement to Nazi Germany in the Munich Agreement, symbolizing the failure of the West to prevent the annexation and eventual occupation of Czechoslovakia which would be doomed to seven years of Nazi domination, but also Poland’s subsequent invasion in 1939, conditions that lead to the outbreak of World War II.  The film is set in the fictional mountains of an unnamed European country, where the trains have stopped running as an avalanche has stranded the mostly British characters in a picturesque mountain resort, introduced in near storybook fashion where the mountainous backdrop has obviously been artfully painted, while the initial shots zooming into the snowbound village, “one of Europe’s few undiscovered corners,” is clearly a miniature set, featuring toy trains, powdered snow, and frozen figurines, all adding a touch of playfulness.  While the early hotel scenes play out as a comedy of manners, a British comic farce with Hitchcock deriving pleasure at the misfortunes of the British travelers having to put up with the discomforts and confusions of life abroad, as the hotel is besieged by panicked customers who will need another night’s accommodations, the film is essentially a train journey of British passengers anxious to get home who form a microcosm of English society, all filmed in one train car (the rest were miniatures or artificially realized), where the audience becomes absorbed by the characters and the story.  Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne), are an amusing gay couple who represent the idle rich, the same ruling classes that are working to appease Hitler, where they are more worried about a cricket match than the concerns of others.  Stalled at the desk waiting for a room, they are appalled at the attention given to several spoiled and attractive young girls whose idea of wealth is marrying into it, somehow detesting this idea, as represented by the young and beautiful heroine, Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), an heiress returning home to marry some fabulously wealthy, father-approved Lord who comes with a title and his own coat-of-arms, celebrating her last night with champagne.   

Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) is the elderly, but surprisingly spry governess enthralled by the local music, and if you blink you’ll miss that the musician she is listening to on the streets below is snuffed out in an instant, unseen by anyone, adding a gripping element of terror to the nonstop comedy, where in this film Hitchcock cleverly disguises and prolongs the sense of urgency from an existing, though largely unseen danger that could threaten all their lives, yet the rising tension is balanced by breezy, lighthearted British comedy throughout.  Musicologist Gilbert, Michael Redgrave in his first starring role, rudely refuses to stop making plenty of racket in his room above Iris, where the two begin as arch enemies, bickering incessantly, though in that delightfully cultivated British sense of humor. Both Gilbert and Miss Froy are coy about their class status, neither one mentioning their past, though both are cultured and well educated.  Finally there is Mr. Todhunter (Cecil Parker), perhaps a lawyer of some sort and his attractive female companion, aka Mrs. Todhunter (Linden Travers), where both are probably cheating on their respective spouses and more concerned about not being detected.  Just before they board the train, Iris has just been hit over the head by a second story window planter that appears to have been intentionally dropped, though likely targeting someone else.  Miss Froy takes her under her wing and looks after her on the train, offering her some tea, the British cure for everything.  Falling asleep afterwards, by the time she awakes, Miss Froy has vanished.  Iris searches the train, but all the other passengers deny ever having seen her, while documents have apparently been forged by the wait staff to suggest Iris earlier had tea alone.  All of this is a growing mystery, where the only person to come to her aid is Gilbert, who feels it’s the only right and honorable thing to do, to help a lady in distress.  They  run into a brick wall, however, where some people have their own private reasons not to get involved, while others are secret collaborators in a Nazi spy ring, but Iris grows more hysterical by the minute, eventually pulling the lever to stop the train.  This draws the ire of most passengers, who begin to think of her as that crazy lady, where Paul Lukas, winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor for WATCH ON THE RHINE (1943), beating out Humphrey Bogart from CASABLANCA (1942), plays a seemingly compassionate brain surgeon Dr. Hartz who attributes the problem to the bump on her head, claiming it’s a very common Freudian symptom for those suffering from concussion-related hallucinations and offers to treat her at his clinic later that same evening. 

The viewer has every reason to believe Iris is going out of her mind, even though evidence seen with our own eyes suggests otherwise, where something sinister hangs in the air.  To unravel the mystery, they search every car and every compartment, where they even discover another woman dressed exactly like Miss Froy, which only adds to the intrigue.  It has the macabre underground atmosphere of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet who specialize in the art of the double-cross, always meeting in secrecy while conducting shady business transactions, as there’s a cloud of suspicion hanging over everyone’s head.  By a process of elimination, they have only to confirm the identity of Dr. Hartz’s patient, whose face is wrapped in bandages, guarded by a Catholic nun (Catherine Lacy), reportedly deaf and dumb, though later we hear her speaking perfectly, actually changing sides and helping the British couple, a similar theme initiated earlier in Number Seventeen (1932).  A key clue gives the nun away, opening the door to new possibilities, actually saving their lives when the doctor, who turns out to be a cold-blooded Nazi agent, thinks the snooping team is getting too close, miraculously finding Miss Froy underneath all those bandages, while exchanging patients with the woman wearing her identical clothes, replacing the bandages over her face.  As the doctor gets off with his patient at his intended stop, however, he discovers something is amiss, where we see him speaking to various military officials.  While for a moment Miss Froy is free to breathe again, Gilbert makes an announcement to the British passengers in the train’s dining car just as they are having tea (of course) explaining the nefarious activities of the good doctor who attempted to kidnap Miss Froy, suggesting they all may be in trouble.  With this announcement, the dining car has been separated from the train and shifted to a side track, where it rolls to a stop in the middle of a forest.  Cars can be seen through the trees, along with Dr. Hartz and several military men, where the reaction of the group mimics the standard European reaction to the growing Nazi threat, suggesting things like this don’t happen, they seem like reasonable sorts, perhaps we could reason with them, where Todhunter proclaims with the same assurance as Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies), the bird expert in The Birds (1960), “They can’t possibly do anything to us.  We’re British subjects.”  Leave it to the gayest character on the train, Caldicott, to retort, “Pacifist?  Won’t work.  Christians tried it and got thrown to the lions.”  But as the soldiers quickly advance with guns pointed, Gilbert fires at them before allowing armed men to take over the train.  Disregarding the warnings of others, Todhunter takes the appeasement route and declares, “This is madness, I’ll go out and speak to them,” but he’s shot on the spot, despite carrying a white handkerchief. 

There on that train, in the middle of some nameless forest, a firefight breaks out.  It’s only then that Miss Froy reminds them all, “You shouldn’t judge any country by its politics.  We English are quite honest by nature,” revealing she is carrying government secrets, which have been coded into a musical melody that she heard out her window that night, quickly teaching it to Gilbert before she escapes out the back way.  Leave it to the oldest among them to show her true colors, reminding the embattled group that it will take all of them to stand up to this fascist scourge.  Only by banding together, instead of meekly minding their own business, are they able to change the dark tide, but only through the self-sacrifice of the only working class Brit aboard, where no one in this group even recognizes a lower-class London accent, disguised earlier as the foreign nun, as she turns out to be a civilian Englishwoman that helps save the day.  This is a different kind of espionage film, unlike the gun-toting, misogynistic, martini-drinking James Bond films, as this represents a far more accurate portrayal of the enormous contribution made by female intelligence agents.  Bletchley Park where the Allies decrypted the Nazi codes during WW II was largely run by women, where Churchill referred to these invaluable women as being “the geese who laid the golden eggs, but did not cackle.”  American chef and television personality Julia Child worked for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war, working directly for the head of OSS, General William J. Donovan.  In much the same way, Charters and Caldicott, the cricket obsessed gay Brits who are the most jovial couple in the film, rise to the occasion and prove to be patriotic Englishmen who do not hesitate to use force to defend themselves.  They clearly foreshadow the role of the great British mathematician Alan Turing, the subject of THE IMITATION GAME (2014), a brilliantly educated gay man who devised a number of groundbreaking techniques for breaking German codes.  Winston Churchill said Turing made the single biggest contribution to the Allied victory in the war against Nazi Germany.  Nonetheless, showing the depths of how depraved and empty-headed government cabinet ministers can be (a view likely shared by Hitchcock), Turing was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952.  In something out of Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), as an alternative to prison, he accepted what amounts to chemical castration by taking female hormone injections, dying two years later from cyanide poisoning.  It took until 2009 for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to make an official government apology for “the appalling way he was treated.” The Queen also granted him a posthumous pardon in 2013.  Like Renoir’s RULES OF THE GAME (1939) made a year later, there’s a special significance for these films coming on the dawn of World War II, as they are, among other things, a prophetic commentary on the troubled times, anticipating the cataclysmic events to come, while also serving as a clarion call to arms against the forces of fascism. 

Note – The Hitchcock cameo comes at the 92-minute mark where Hitchcock, wearing a black coat and puffing on a cigarette, is seen walking on the platform of London’s Victoria Station as Iris and Gilbert are returning to the city.

Mourning Becomes Electra

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA             C-                   

USA  (173 mi)  1947  d:  Dudley Nichols 

I prayed for him to be killed in the war. Oh, if he were only dead.               

—Christine Mannon (Katina Paxinou)

I had a queer feeling that war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself.

The only love I can know now is the love of guilt for guilt, which breeds more guilt, until you get so deep at the bottom of Hell that there’s no lower you can sink. You rest there.

Don't cry. The damned don't cry.                    —Orin Mannon (Michael Redgrave)

Eugene O’Neill is a theatrical revelation, the greatest American playwright whose breadth of work, four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, seems to only scratch the surface in terms of showcasing the true intelligence and depth of his work, introducing a searing realism into American theater while also creating experimental works that remain avant garde well into the next century.  Known for his deep characterization of shattered souls, battered consciousness, and disillusioned characters that face the bleakest of circumstances, his blisteringly realistic dialogue is like no other, often expressed in lengthy monologues, spilling one’s guts over drink and agonizing despair, where a night in the theater with O’Neill is one to remember, as the viewer can expect to be steamrolled into painful submission by the elegant poetry used to lay one’s soul bare.  His plays are never easy, are among the most difficult to endure, but can be revelatory in their confessional honesty.  Despite all the attempts to film O’Neill, and on IMDb there are nearly 100 such attempts, none provide the full breadth of dramatic reach as sitting in the theater and experiencing it for yourselves.  Having said all that, watching this 3-hour film version of MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA is like watching a painfully obvious trainwreck that screeches and jolts out of control as it continually rides off the rails.  Dudley Nichols worked as a screenwriter with director John Ford on 16 productions, the last being THE FUGITIVE (1947), when they had a falling out, never to work together again.  At about the exact same time, Nichols made his third and final attempt at directing with this film, writing scripts for another decade but never to direct again, so one can surmise this was not a particularly proud period in his life.  How many things can go wrong in one production?—this film continually asks that question.  First off, it is horribly miscast, using actors who aren’t remotely familiar with O’Neill character or dialogue, which is evidenced immediately, where despite being a lengthy family drama, there is nothing remotely similar about anyone in the cast.  And what about the acting?  Nichols exerts no control whatsoever over his actors who are allowed such free reign to overact in hysterical and melodramatic acting school fashion so that the film plays out as high camp, as if they are all channeling Gloria Swanson. 

For a man who worked with Ford, who was such a perfectionist on the set, Nichols shows no signs of understanding sound, as conversations are drowned out by approaching trains, or lighting, as much of his interior scenes are poorly lit, camerawork, as there’s little to speak of, but often the camera is either too far away or too close, never figuring out a cohesive pattern of bringing it all together.  And what about the acting?  Both Rosalind Russell and Michael Redgrave give cringe-worthy performances, yet both were inexplicably nominated for Academy Awards, one supposes for simply getting through the lengthy material, where they are onstage for the length of two films, but their wretchedly overwrought tone simply ruins the picture, turning this soap opera into a viciously cruel melodrama filled with backstabbing gossip and longstanding family squabbles, where it’s like watching cats squawking at one another continually trying to draw blood.  The intense bloodbath in the mother/daughter hatred between scheming matriarch Christine Mannon, supposedly sophisticated Greek actress Katina Paxinou who later appeared in Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and her spitefully spoiled and contemptuous daughter Lavina (Rosalind Russell, in real life only six years younger), play out their scenes like B-movie horror camp, as their arms flail back, as if in fright, while their eyes grow deliriously huge, as if seeing a monster, where the threat is so pronounced that they are at each other’s throats simply by entering a room, as if they can detect each other’s odor.  This paranoid and deluded catfight behavior is explained in the clearly dysfunctional family history, where Lavina is a daddy’s girl, worshipping the ground her father, General Ezra Mannon (Raymond Massey, never duller), walks on, while her brother Orin (Michael Redgrave), is coddled and pampered by his mother, where for each, their one and only love is their chosen parent to adore and idolize, while despising the other parent with corrosively poisonous venom.  Dudley Nichols is a career screenwriter, so it’s obvious he understands the complex literary ramifications of the words, but his idea of what constitutes theatricality is painfully overwrought self-indulgence.  Everyone in the cast has a wildly different accent, yet they’re all supposedly one distraught family.    

One other technique, often used in O’Neill plays, is hearing inner thoughts spoken out loud, supposedly representing what the characters are really thinking, but there’s no rhyme or reason to how this device is used in the film, so it just appears oddly weird, or in O’Neill’s vernacular “queer,” as we hear the sound of the voice but they’re not talking to anyone, nor is what they’re saying of any particular importance.  Onstage, especially in Strange Interludes (1928), this is a hilarious device, used as savagely satiric thoughts that are so devastatingly candid, one could never speak those words out loud.  Culled from the earliest period of Greek tragedy, a reworking of the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, where each play serves as a chapter in a continuous dramatic narrative, O’Neill has reset the period to the end of the American Civil War, divided into three parts, each cut in half from the original play to about one hour in length, Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted.  The film flopped terribly at the box office and was quickly recut from 173-minutes to 105-minutes, where a 3-part drama was reduced to only 2-parts, eliminating the final sequence altogether.  But even when revived to its overlong original form, this is clearly a massive failure in every respect, as the overwrought tone never changes, becoming stiflingly predictable and repetitive after awhile, an exhaustive rehashing of the Freudian Oedipus complex and Electra complex, played out to the extremes, where it’s just more and more of the same tortuous agony, each character haunted by their carefully calculated mistakes, which drives them to deplorable behavior, where a similar guilty conscience theme is much more beautifully developed and tangibly connected to the historical and poverty stricken times in John Ford’s The Informer (1935).  Without a trace of humor anywhere to be found, excerpt perhaps in the malicious nature of the gossiping Greek chorus seen at the beginning, housewives on the loose, the exaggerated overacting often leads to unintended chuckles, where it’s easy to laugh at just how ridiculous this is, where the plantation-like New England estate resembles a bank vault, a monstrous mansion with carefully kept secrets locked behind closed doors, where characters are continually locking personal items in locked drawers, and when family members have a private chat, they continually lock the doors behind them so other family members are intentionally shut out.  After awhile, Katina Paxinou had to enjoy slamming the door in the face of Rosalind Russell.  Unfortunately, these small pleasures are few and far between, making this a worst case scenario for viewing an O’Neill play on film, better stick to Sidney Lumet’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962) or his made-for-TV version of THE ICEMAN COMETH (1960), both films starring the incomparable O’Neill stalwart Jason Robards. 

The Innocents

THE INNOCENTS                 A                    

Great Britain  USA  (100 mi)  1961  ‘Scope  d:  Jack Clayton

What shall I sing to my lord from my window?

What shall I sing for my lord will not stay?

What shall I sing for my lord will not listen?

Where shall I go when my lord is away?

Whom shall I love when the moon is arisen?

Gone is my lord and the grave is his prison.

What shall I say when my lord comes a calling?

What shall I say when he knocks on my door?

What shall I say when his feet enter softly?

Leaving the marks of his grave on my floor.

Enter my lord. Come from your prison.

Come from your grave, for the moon is a risen.

Welcome, my lord.

—Miles (Martin Stephens)

seen here on YouTube:  The_Innocents_1961_Miles_Poem.MP4 - YouTube  

They are both playing, or being made to play, some monstrous game. I can’t pretend to understand what its purpose it, I only know that it is happening—something secretive, and whispery, and indecent. 

We must try to learn what it is these horrors want.  Think, Mrs. Grose, the answer must lie in the past.

Unless he’s deceiving us, unless they’re both deceiving us—the innocents.

They can only reach each other by reaching into the souls of the children and possessing them. The children are possessed.  They live, and know, and share this hell.

—Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr)

One of the true classics of Gothic horror, an extraordinary adaptation of Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw, a novella written about 1898 and initially published in serial installments.  “It is a curious story," begins James, “a most poisonous tale,” says Oscar Wilde, while according to Virginia Woolf, “Henry James's ghosts have nothing in common with the violent old ghosts—the blood-stained sea captains, the white horses, the headless ladies of the dark lanes and windy commons.  They have their origins with us...We are afraid of something unnamed, of something, perhaps in ourselves.”  Without an ounce of blood or gore, and no trace of physical violence, this remains one of the most menacing films ever made, where the film version loses nothing in the translation to another medium, as all the ghastly wickedness is retained.  Set during the Victorian era, the story concerns the care of two children living on the immense grounds of a beautifully landscaped English country manor in Essex known as Bly, cared for by the housekeeper and servants, as due to the death of their parents, the uncle in charge of their affairs, Michael Redgrave, travels the world and has no time to take care of them, so straightaway he hires a new governess, Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), a prim and proper pastor’s daughter, where the question that concerns him is whether she has an imagination, putting her in charge with strict instructions not to have any communications with him.  This opens the door to an entirely new world, as transported from reality as a visit to Transylvania, but Miss Giddens relies on sound reasoning and her good judgment.  

Her sunny outlook, however, is met with clues that something is amiss, as immediately the young boy is expelled from school for unspecified charges, where it was alleged he had a contaminating influence on the others.  Happy to return back to the grounds of Bly, he has a very adult air about him, carrying himself with extraordinary confidence, where the two children remain always together, secretly laughing and whispering between themselves.  Miss Giddens inexplicably views two apparitions in broad daylight, which leads her to believe that the children are under the evil power of ghosts, where she feels bound and determined to save them.  Miles, the young boy about 13, is haunted by Peter Quint, the former servant to the uncle, currently deceased, while Flora, age 10, is haunted by Miss Jessel, the former governess, also deceased.  Quint openly flaunted his abusive sexual control over Jessel, now his sexually obedient accomplice, never hiding his crudeness in front of the children, scaring the longtime housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins), who never uttered a word.  It is never known if these spirits are inventions of the sexually repressed imagination of the inexperienced governess, who may secretly be trying to please the guardian uncle, to whom she may hold some sexual thoughts, or if they really do exist.  By observing the children’s behavior, however, which grows suddenly mysterious in their presence, she is convinced the children can see them and that the apparitions hold a strange power over them.      

Everything is seen through the eyes of the governess, which reaches a peak of hysteria when the children play dress up and Miles recites a haunting poem about the powerful presence of death hovering over him.  Both Giddens and Mrs. Grose greet the children with huge smiles on their faces, indulging them in their playful fun, but Giddens’ face turns to utter horror at what she hears, fearful for the lives of the children.  James described Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as “my hovering blighted presences, my pair of abnormal agents,” a “haunting pair” driven by a “villainy of motive,” a motive which, in neither the book nor the film, is ever explained.  Kerr gives perhaps her best performance, especially as she presents herself as such a grounded character, but her agility and range of expression throughout is unparalleled in her career.  Since this comes from such a popular literary work, the screen adaptation is equally impressive, actually based on the 1950 stage adaptation by William Archibald, but especially the contribution of Truman Capote, who seems to thrive in the voices of the children, emboldened by the solitary worlds of their own invention on the spectacular grounds of the decaying estate, offering them a wisdom beyond their years.  The production design is chillingly appropriate, with candle lit reflections in the tall mirrors, winding staircases, columns, statues, paintings, and a constantly burning fireplace.  The ‘Scope cinematography by Freddie Francis is claustrophobic and charged with atmosphere, the work he personally considers his best effort, filled with slow fades and a blurring of the boundaries between life and death, the real and the imagined, all of which contribute to Miss Giddens’ growing awareness of something sinister in the air that she knows for certain is “something secretive, and whispery, and indecent.”  Described by Pauline Kael as “The best ghost story I’ve ever seen,” this production leaves intact the power of the original work that makes sure the experience rests in the dusty cobwebs of our own imaginations.