Word: berghofs
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...choosing the first show, the powers-that-be naturally wanted a festive work of acknowledged merit. They settled on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and engaged Herbert Berghof as director. The work is too well known to warrant much comment. It is, of course, the last and subtlest of the Bard's true comedies--a study of (1) unrequited lovers (in which, by rare exception, young love is not opposed by an elder generation), and of (2) poseurs. Every member of the personae is a persona in the old Latin sense of a mask-wearer; and the play...
...Shakespeare was a pretty imaginative fellow. And director Berghof is one of the most acutely imaginative men in the business (as any one of his recent productions will testify). Put the two men together, and the result was bound to be unusual and worth careful examination...
...Berghof's thinking must have run something as follows: "This is a festive occasion, so I want a festive production. The author has obligingly given a good deal of license in the second part of his complete title--Twelfth Night; or, What You Will. The most famous words in the whole play are, oddly enough, the very first ones: 'If music be the food of love, play on.' Ha, look at the next words: 'Give me excess of it.' And Shakespeare has filled his text with references to songs. Of course we can't have singing without dancing...
Whatever one may think of this line of reasoning, it must be admitted that Berghof has succeeded in doing almost everything he set out to do. His production makes use of the fine two-story basic stage that Robert O'Hearn designed for the Cambridge Drama Festival's shows in Sanders Theatre. High up, Lester Polakov (whose costumes add much to the general lightness and brightness) has affixed a number of white, stylized orange-tree tops. And by having spikes driven into the poles, Berghof has enabled people to scamper up to a third level. In the garden scene where...
...broke into television at 18, played leading roles for two seasons (Studio One, Kraft Theater], then put in a weary tour in Hollywood acting in second-rate films (New York Confidential, The Naked Street). Last August she went back to Manhattan to study acting with Drama Coach Herbert Berghof-and to find sudden fame on Broadway...