Word: agamemnon
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Then, in the humiliation of his last days at school, a simple act of kindness changes The Crock's life. A pupil (Brian Smith) astonishes him by presenting a parting gift, a copy of the Agamemnon in the Robert Browning translation. This gesture pierces The Crock's outer crust and strikes an emotional gusher. With the help of Rattigan's facile plotting, it leads to the wife's comeuppance at the hands of her lover and, finally, to a rebellious upsurge of self-respect in The Crock...
...mostly the matter with the first of their plays is that it seldom seems like a play at all. It is merely an undynamic stage treatment of Jeffers' well-known dramatic poem on the House of Atreus. Though it chronicles the matricide of Clytemnestra, the murders of Agamemnon, Aegisthus and Cassandra, and more than dabbles in adultery and incest, it is too choked by imagery ever to ignite, is too highbustedly declamatory ever to terrify...
...people over at Brattle are understandably excited about this production, and at a rehearsal Sunday night some of them were moved to tears by Mr. Devlin's performance. This is surely the most ambitions local undertaking since the "Agamemnon" was given in Soldiers Field in 1906, and may prove to be the most momentous American Shakespearean production of the decade--Momentous not only in the appearance of William Devlin but in the ultimate "making" of the Brattle Hall group...
...unable, throughout his career, to maintain the delicate balance between discipline and affability--taking refuge in a severity which was lightened only by dry puns. The climax occurs when a member of his alienated Greek class presents him, on his retirement, with a copy of Browning version of the "Agamemnon"--second hand--inscribed with a tender quote from Aeschulus. The master breaks into tears and later reveals his unrequitted attempts at winning the affection of his classes and his sexually unsatisfied wife...
Edward Finnegan makes an impressive and pompous Agamemnon. Gregg Martin, as Achilles, is quite as conceited and despicably treacherous as intended. And John Peters plays a delightfully stupid and proud Ajax...