J. B.

J. B. (1958), a play by Archibald MacLeish. [ANTA Theatre, 364 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] J. B. ( Pat Hingle) is a successful businessman who seems to have everything in life. Walking through the great traveling circus that is the world, he comes to the attention of Mr. Zuss ( Raymond Massey), a downtrodden balloon seller, and Nickles ( Christopher Plummer), a sardonic popcorn vendor. After Nickles puts on the Satanmask and Zuss the Godmask, they confront J. B. One by one his blessings are taken away—his wealth lost, his children killed, his body diseased, his wife deserting him. But J. B. refuses to condemn God, so his wounds are healed. He concludes, “What suffers, loves.” The American poet Archibald MACLEISH (1892–1982), a native of Glencoe, Illinois, studied at Yale and at Harvard Law School. He wrote several other verse dramas, such as Panic (1935) and The Music Crept by Me upon the Waters (1953), but J. B. was his only commercial success. Louis Kronenberger noted, “Judged as a theatre piece, J. B.—at least in the first half—had a striking theatricality. . . . Judged as philosophic drama, though an effort of a sort and size unusual in today's American theatre, J. B. was not altogether satisfying.” For all its flaws, the Alfred de Liagre Jr.–produced play, suggested by the Book of Job, was a noteworthy success.