Word: actress
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Just before she went onstage as Lady Macbeth at Boston's brand-new, nylon-roofed arena theater last week, Irish Actress Siobhan McKenna sent a note to her costar, Jason Robards Jr. "Dear Macbeth," she wrote. "It's funny that after all these years I haven't got to know your first name. I want you to know that yours is the most moving and truly poetic Macbeth I have ever known." When the play was finished, apart from critics who claimed to miss polish and high oratorical style, the cheering audience was willing to go Siobhan...
...always convincing as the man of honor changing slowly into an unwilling miscreant and finally into a ruthless, sneering, hell-bent King. Outstanding moments: his bloody babbling after Macbeth murders Duncan ("Macbeth does murder sleep"), the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech as he holds his dead wife in his arms. Actress McKenna made her Lady Macbeth warm and feminine ("I feel people should have compassion for the sinners of the world"). In the sleepwalking scene, her red hair streaming above a white, wispy gown and her hands scrubbing themselves in ghastly compulsion, Actress McKenna put on the greatest mad scene seen...
With this production, the time has come for a stock-taking of Miss McKenna's stature. No matter how fine the performances given in modern plays by an actress, the accolade of "truly great" is not generally bestowed on her unless she proves she can excel in several of the notable classic roles...
...Morton Wishengrad's The Rope Dancers. But she has also recreated an impressive number of classic roles. She has given us a warm Sister Juana and a wonderful Maggie Wylie; and an unmatchably transcendent Saint Joan, which may serve as a yardstick for all future performances by an actress. In Shakespeare, she has now offered us a memorable Hamlet (yes, the title role!), Viola, and Lady Macbeth. And I have not cited her portrayals of other classic roles abroad...
...July 29 The U.S. Steel Hour (CBS, 10-11 p.m.).* One girl (Peggy Ann Garner) wants to be an actress, the other (Erin O'Brien) wants to be a housewife, and their careers get hopelessly tangled. The problem may not promise high drama, but the program is the only live dramatic show left on the summer schedule...