Stop the World-I Want to Get Off: the Vice as Everyman

Authors

Ina Rae Hark, University of South Carolina

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, the first paragraph of the essay follows:

When the Leslie Bricusse-Anthony Newley musical Stop the World - I Want to Get off opened on Broadway in October 1962, the generally tepid New York reviewers condescendingly labeled its style a derivative of Marcel Marceau's Seven Ages of Man pantomime and its protagonist, Littlechap, "a British Everyman."¹ Although they were correct concerning in the play's indebtedness to these concepts,² by failing to consider the dramatic traditions associated with the medieval morality play, ultimate source of the Mankind figure and the Seven Ages trope, they overlooked the subtle ways in which Bricusse and Newley had shaped the conventions of a theological drama to portray Everyman in a modern, God-deserted setting.

Recommended Citation

Hark, Ina Rae (1978) "Stop the World-I Want to Get Off: the Vice as Everyman," Comparative Drama: Vol. 12: Iss. 2, Article 1.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/compdr/vol12/iss2/1