Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.Off Broadway: Swapping Obscenities
Liberty deteriorating into license has become a contemporary abuse in several arts. In Michael McClure's The Beard, which opened at a Greenwich Village theater last week, two characters made up as Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid swap repetitive obscenities for 60 minutes. To what end? If The Beard means to scandalize, it fails: its words are now numbingly familiar onstage. If it means to extol freedom of speech, it falters: its four-letter words express so little that they produce constraint of speech.
Why Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid are the heroine...
To read the entire article, you must be a TIME subscriber. Already registered? Sign in below
Current print subscribers to register
Subscribe now to get TIME All Access
Email, Password or Region is incorrect
A required form parameter was missing.
The System is currently down. Please try again in a few minutes.
Email Address is invalid
Password is blank
Most Popular »
- E.T. Turns 30: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Our Favorite Extraterrestrial
- How Cash Keeps Poor People Poor
- 15-Year-Old Creates Test for Pancreatic Cancer
- Nevada Ghosts: Rare Photos From an A-Bomb Test
- Euro Crisis: Why A Greek Exit Could Be Much Worse Than Expected
- Could a Fertility Gene Discovery Lead to New Male Contraception?
- 10 Dangerous Products You Might Have in Your Home
- Obama Stumbles? Why the President's Right to Talk About Bain
- Star Wars Turns 35: How TIME Covered the Film Phenomenon
- Fourth Flesh-Eating-Bacteria Case Confirmed in Georgia, Possible Fifth
- Researchers Probe the Potential Health Benefits of Palm Oil
- A Visit with Turkey's Controversial Religious Movement
- Feeding the Planet Without Destroying It
- Bubble on the Potomac
- Falcon's Liftoff: How a Private Firm Could Change Space Exploration
- The Fatal Flight of the Superjet 100: Why Did It Slam Into a Mountain?
- Learning That Works
- The Man Who Remade Motherhood
- Bibi's Choice
- Seoul: 10 Things to Do
More News from Our Partners
Top Stories on TIME.com
Quotes of the Day »
RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
