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Overview
"This previously unpublished verse-drama presents the life of world-renowned escape artist and illusionist, Harry Houdini. Part biography, part fantasy, the musical leads us from Houdini's childhood in Appleton, Wisconsin (picking up pins with his eyelids) to his acts under water and his travels abroad. With pathos and playfulness, song and dance, Muriel Rukeyser introduces us to Houdini's wife Bess and his mother Cecilia, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the poet's own Marco Bone. The musical presents Houdini's congressional testimony against spiritual mediums, and shows his great feats of escape, his complex relationships with his mother and his wife, and his ironic, untimely death on Halloween 1926." Throughout this remarkable work, Rukeyser challenges the locks and constraints that imprison us all. She invites us to overcome whatever fears entrap us and - through the life of Harry Houdini - she shows us what it means to claim the freedom that is our birth right.Synopsis
Houdini unlocks time and reality--on the page, in a box, under water, onstage!
Library Journal
A noted social and political activist and writer, Rukeyser (1913-80) is best known for her powerful poetry, e.g., Book of the Dead, which focuses on West Virginia coal miners dying of silicosis. Previously unpublished, this verse drama was performed once in 1973 at the Lenox Center for Performing Arts. Here, we see the great escape artist and his wife, Bess, fall in love, marry, and face fear and death together. In the play, Bess speaks one of Rukeyser's most famous lines, which has been adopted by the women's movement: "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open." Rukeyser's poetic dialog and songs effectively contribute to the dreamlike quality of the play. An interesting addition to Houdini lore, this is recommended for large contemporary theater art collections, as well as collections of women writers.-Howard Miller, Rosary H.S. Lib., St. Louis Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.