Ambassadors from Broadway

Berlin theatergoers were entranced and disturbed at the same time: Die Meuterei auf der Caine upset their time-honored Prussian reverence for military men and military orders. The neo-Nazis found some solace in Lieut. Barney Greenwald's last-act defense of Navy discipline, insisted that the play supported the defense at the Nuernberg war criminals' trial: that subordinates are not responsible for the orders of their superiors. But most West Berliners accepted the lesson of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial as a common-sense American compromise between institutional rules and individual dignity. The Caine, like many another U.S. play, was doing a dramatic diplomatic job abroad that any Foreign Service man might envy.

Das Kleine Teehaus was one of the best. After 100 sold-out performances, The Teahouse of the August Moon was still a smash hit in West Berlin, will move next week to a more commodious theater. Berliners, wearily familiar with occupation armies, were delighted with an American play that deliberately spoofed the U.S. Army's postwar occupation of Okinawa (TIME, Oct. 26, 1953). When Sakini, the raffish Okinawan, declares that "democracy is exhausting," German audiences howl. The boffo line for Berliners comes in the scene where Colonel Purdy announces his determination to bring democracy to the islanders if he has to "shoot every last one of them." Any nation that could kid its own foibles was, to Berliners, something new and pleasant.

Some other American dramatic exports had a more ambiguous effect on foreign audiences:

P: In Paris, Les Sorcieres de Salem, an adaptation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, won critical acclaim and a typically French confusion of interpretations. A few saw the story of the Salem witch hunts as an indictment of Joe McCarthy; others interpreted it as a damnation of Communist persecutions. Commented Le Monde's critic: "This ancient history of sorcery, mobile as a weather vane, can as well be directed at the East as at the West."

P: In Zagreb, Yugoslavia, a State Department-sponsored Porgy and Bess opened with a thunderous, 20-minute ovation. Crowds followed members of the cast through the streets, and Greta Slmntch, who flawlessly played the part of Porgy's goat, gave two liters of milk a day besides. "They loved you in Zagreb," New York Herald Tribune Columnist Art Buchwald cabled the producers, "and that means they'll love you anywhere."

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