Word: bellucci
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Norman Mailer, Stephen Weinberg, Andrew Young and John Bellucci...
...suitors who flock about the sisters are also well-played. John Bellucci masterfully plays Vershinin, the philosophizing soldier with whom Masha falls in love. Bellucci works his rich and versatile voice like a musical instrument, retaining extraordinary control of volume, diction and timing in long, technically taxing monologues. He meticulously defines his character by pacing constantly around the stage in repeated circles that parallel his sermons...
Laboring under the burden of a broken toe, Bellucci nevertheless is eloquent and convincing, especially in the beautifully acted love scenes with Masha. Chris Clemenson takes the awkward character of Tusenbach and fills it out with sympathy and skill. Tusenbach's paeans to labor can easily turn into sermonizing and his devotion to Irina into sickening self-abasement, but Clemenson doesn't self-dramatize the role. He transcends the limiting qualities of the part as Chekhov wrote it to create to subtle portrait of human suffering, weltschmerz...
...contrast, the other actors generally remain trapped within the superficial seriousness of their roles. From the first moment he rushes onstage to confront the king, John Bellucci's Hotspur is the embodiment of the choleric passions that gave that character his name. Racing from lord to lord in a plea to keep his prisoners, Belluci's Hotspur is impulsive, impatient and proud. And where his frenetic gestures grow tiring, his beautiful voice, sneering at some words, spitting out others, compensates. Still, the limitations of Bellucci's portrayal are apparent in the scenes he plays with his wife. While Susan Kander...