Theater: All Fates Are Black

Greek tragedy used to be inaccessible to the American temperament. In a play like Oedipus, for example, it was felt that the punishment of the hero was horrifyingly in excess of his crime, and that too much of the action rested with the will of the gods and too little within the control of the man. In the past decade, public events have brought home to Americans a growing awareness that fate may not be in one's hands but at one's throat. The dirgelike destiny of the Kennedys, the war in Viet Nam, racial...