Word: actes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Director Paul Redford has ingeniously underscored most of the show with subtle percussion music, wood blocks, wind chimes and drums that unite the play and make credible the passing of 16 years and the revelation scene in the fifth act. John Krosnick, however, is occasionally heavy-handed with his drumsticks...
...show's first three acts are brilliant, the blocking simple and elegant and the acting convincing. The first three acts are a sad tale, "best for winter." In the fourth act, the play metamorphoses into a springtime world of romance and comedy: Redford's interpretation of this act is fit only for the Ziegfeld follies. He has included kick lines, scat numbers and Three Stooges slapstick falls. These numbers are endless and the act almost succeeds in ruining an otherwise brilliant production...
Redford has bizarrely chosen the '20s as the setting for this play, a decision chiefly noticeable in the first three acts by the costumes of the performers. In the fourth act, the time setting of the production returns with a vengeance, as peasants do flapper numbers to Louis Armstrong tapes...
Leontes is one of those daunting Shakespearean leads that is almost impossible to pull off. His jealousy of his wife in the first three acts must grow until he loses the ability to think or function as king, or as human being. After his tyrannical madness, Leontes must reappear in the fifth act and be convincingly penitent and remorseful. He must also make credible the revalation scene in which the 'statue' of his wife, who for 16 years he has thought dead, comes to life from her pedestal...
After this scene begins the perilous descent into the cheap gimmickery of the fourth act. David Levi's Camillo is a barometer for the travesties of this act. Levi starts as a glorious Camillo, wonderfully obsequious to his lord but courageous enough to flee with the King of Bohemia. Levi enters the fourth act wearing a turbanlike sunbonnet and granny sunglasses, doing a mincing dance. The Adams House crowd roared...