A Thurber Carnival?

Minnesota High School One Act play festival, February, 1968

This arresting image was from a production of the James Thurber revue A Thurber Carnival inspired by the cartoons and comic stories which had been published in The New Yorker magazine. I don’t know exactly which story this scene is from—I can’t place it in the play’s synopsis. It certainly isn’t in the 2013 film The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I don’t know which school produced this either.

At any rate, on its surface the scene appears to be some kind of abduction, the woman is terrified, the men are sinister. Wholesome entertainment for teenagers? I think not!

A better choice is the play that our school did: The Elephant Calf, by the Commie playwright Bertolt Brecht, including a transvestite, a cigar-smoking baby elephant, women of questionable repute, drunken soldiers, a banana tree and a paganistic moon-goddess and ends with the audience storming the stage and demanding their money back:

Now that’s a quality entertainment suitable for young people!