Word: algernon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Algernon Charles Swinburne, an ardent masochist, rhymed about the pleasures of flagellation. Whippings and alcohol distorted his judgment (as E.E. Cummings put it, "Punished bottoms interrupt philosophy"), but Ober believes that the poet's problems began during the first moments of his life. He recalls Swinburne's own statement about having been born "all but dead," and diagnoses brain damage due to oxygen deprivation. Further circumstantial evidence of neuropathology included the poet's small body and outsized head, his tics and excessively nervous temperament. But his talent was not impaired. Neither was his critical acumen, at least...
...Consider some of the outlandish elements of the play: its baby found in a handbag, its imperious dowager, Lady Bracknell (Elizabeth Wilson), who is "a monster with out being a myth, its one young man, John Worthing (James Valentine), who invents a dissolute brother, and its other young man, Algernon Moncrieff (John Glover), who blithely proceeds to impersonate him. This is farce walking the tightrope of absurdity. But it is also farce at its most urbane - as insolently monocled in manner as it is killingly high-toned in language...
...days in Zurich during the war, when he may or may not have been the British consul and may or may not have met both Joyce and Lenin. There is one thing he is sure of, though; he was a huge success as Ernest--no the other one, Algernon--in Joyce's production of Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest. At least he thinks so, but it was a long time ago, and things changed, and Joyce went on and Lenin went on and everybody went on, but Henry Carr...
Bloomfield's failure lies in his decision to differentiate too sharply between the two ladies and the two gentlemen. Jon Goerner's Algernon--the best performance among the four leads--is a blatantly effeminate fop whose satirical jabs make him seem downright nasty. Davis Goodman's Jack, on the other hand, appears rather put upon, no better than a straight man to Algernon's wit. Goodman makes the balance still more unequal by his inability to vary sufficiently his intonations and break our of the sing-song which mars his delivery...
...Algernon's clipped witticisms and Miss Prism's agonized confrontation with her own carelessness are the two high points of this production. But its real star is Joe Mobilia's sets, whose every detail--from the porcelain tea service to the yellow silk upholstered sofa--elegantly evokes late victorian decadence...