Word: brooked
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association), Britain's equivalent of the U.S.O., and for the next two years played Shakespeare, Shaw and O'Neill. Later, he joined the Memorial Theater in Stratford on Avon, which has since grown into the pre-eminent Royal Shakespeare Company. He and Peter Brook are co-directors of the group although Scofield's chief function is that of spokesman "for the actor's point of view...
...elderly look about him. But the hair-spray and bent condition with which Alec Walker achieves his decay have fake written all over them. Besides, Corbaccio really looks the right age for Volpone, Volpone for Mosca, and Mosca for the young Bonario, who, as played by Jim Brook, might be a recent graduate of Miss Hewett's Nursery School for the Self-Conscious Aesthete...
David Wheeler's production departs from Brook where it shouldn't and follows it where it must. This is inevitable, since the play really doesn't exist apart from its interpretation. Wheeler substitutes a broad cineramic "happening" stage for Brook's deep proscenium, paralyzing the underlings and thrusting the chorus in our laps. This is fine, for he makes good use of vertical poses (pyramids, piggy-backs, tableaux) at the expense of marching scenes and horas. But there are other problems. Kimball and Kimbrough, while excellent, are all too evidently acting toward their roles from their personalities (which shouldn...
...excitement is relentless. Jacques Roux (Robert Fields), the mad priest of the insurrection, bursts in straitjacketed and has to be crushed. Deperret (Joseph Hindy), an "erotomaniac" whom Brook equipped with a perpetual erection, urges Charlotte to return to Caen; he forgets himself and nearly rapes her. Sade is whipped -- in London and New York with Corday's flowing hair, since the decency laws forbade public flagellation -- and here with a lash of six flat leather tails. Marat sinks into darkness and confronts the ghosts of his past, who slander his childhood, and Voltaire and Lavoisier, who mock his scientific achievements...
...good, that the play is exhaustingly effective. John Coe (Herald), Frank Cassidy (Coulmier) and Bronia Stefan (Marat's mistress Simonne) deserve mention. Roberta Collinge and Josephine Lane highlight the chorus, and the full-throated Katherine Garnett (who drools) very nearly takes the show. Go, if you think you can Brook it. But hope David Wheeler tightens up Act I by tonight, when I'm going again...