Next in the club's famous-man tradition was Leonard Bernstein. By setting the music to jazz and using Indian costumes, Bernstein and the boys managed to get universally good reviews--even from the CRIMSON:
'Barnum & Bailey'
"A combination of the imagination of Jules Oline and Salvador Dali could not have concocted such a triumph of weird and other worldly wilderness as kicked up the dust in Sanders Theatre last night. Fantastic masks, brilliant costumes, lighting of all the colors of the rainbow,--it is impossible to describe, but the nearest thing to it is Barnum and Bailey at their best, minus the elephants,"--and so the writer went on.
World War II, however, slowed down Barnum and Bailey as well as the Classics Club, and the ancients went back to their graves until old soldiers, in their turn, began to fade away.
When the ancients returned, it almost seemed as if only the Romans had survived. For nearly a decade the club has put on a yearly Latin play, but no Greek.
Thus Oedipus at Colonus will be the groups first post-war Greek production, and typically the club has returned to Sophocles.
While the great tradition remains 75 years after the first performance, this year's show will have many changes from the original production. Coordinate instruction long ago brought female actresses into female parts. Tickets will also be available for considerably less than a blackmarket $30 price, and the audience which will venture over to Fogg Art Museum probably will be far less famous. Yet 75 years is a long time. Boston has become less sedate, and the performance will be less pretentious, but the idea is certainly as ambitious. Whether the critics rave again remains to be seen. But few will think that Greek drama has died at Harvard after the show has closed.