Word: bedford
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Equus takes place in the present in Rokeby Psychiatric Hospital in Southern Egland. The child psychiatrist, Martin Dysart (Brian Bedford) is asked by the local magistrate, Heather Salomon (Sheila Smith) to take on an unusual case: a disturbed young man who was brought to her court for commiting a crime less horrible in its consequences than in its explanation, a crime that is in one sense an unspeakable mystery. Alan Strang (Dai Bradley), the boy, arrives at the hospital in a state of extreme catatonia, singing advertising jingles or watching television during the day and living in a world...
...Bedford, Mass...
...does get a lasting grip on playgoers' memories and critics' yardsticks. His successors must always suffer the ordeal of comparison. Even long-dead actors exert their possessive prerogatives. Praise a present Hamlet and some oldtimer will tell you that "Barrymore was the greatest." In Twelfth Night, Brian Bedford retkes the Malvolio...
...preens before the mirror of his self-approbation. "Holier than thou" drips from every syllable he speaks. He is thus terribly gullible when a trumped-up letter purports to disclose that the lady Olivia, whom he serves as a kind of steward, is desperately in love with him. Bedford purses his lips as if his mouth were pickled in brine. He walks with the gravity of a frozen penguin. His mien alternates between a mask of hauteur and a tickled-pink grin of uncontainable self-adulation. As an actor, he takes the treacherous gamble of playing directly to the audience...
...delude themselves as to what they are. A form of the word appears in Act I, Scene 3, and it recurs like the tolling of a melancholy bell. Duke Vincentio (William Hutt) has decided to cede his authority for a while to his austere deputy, the rectitudinous Angelo (Brian Bedford). As the lordly duke dons monkish attire (he will seem to be a friar), he implies that he is testing Angelo: "Hence shall we see,/ If power change purpose, what our seemers be." Initially, Angelo acts as severely as we would expect. He condemns Claudio (Stephen Macht) to be executed...