Word: caedmon
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HENRY IV, PART I & HENRY IV, PART II (Caedmon). There are those who believe that Falstaff is the greatest comic character in English literature, and these recordings will not disappoint them. Anthony Quayle's voice combines the tavern-soaked grossness of "fat Jack" with the agile wit and arrogant flair of Sir John. Michael Redgrave as Hotspur seems at times to get only false teeth into the part...
CAESAR & CLEOPATRA (Caedmon) is more than a little like Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. For the tyrannical pedant of phonetics, Henry Higgins, Shaw substitutes the philosopher-king of Rome. In place of the forlorn flower girl who must be passed off as a lady, the play offers an adolescent Egyptian minx who must be tutored in regality. The playwright's purposes are somewhat thwarted by this recording. Max Adrian is little better than a fashionably tailored verbal dandy, and an overagitated Claire Bloom is more often short of breath than breathless...
KING LEAR (Caedmon) is a regal fool who topples into the abyss of unreason to discover the naked truth of the human condition. Paul Scofield is a cool, knowledgeable, self-contained actor who would not dream of venturing past the proscenium arch. In consequence, the recording neither sears nor scars; it might be a useful high school text...
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: THE GLASS MENAGERIE (2 LPs: Caedmon). First of a new series that aims to record "the masterpieces of all the great playwrights" from Aeschylus to lonesco. Though it is a rather fragile choice, the play's apartment setting and small cast both lend themselves easily to recording. Montgomery Clift is the warehouse "Shakespeare," and Julie Harris plays the gentle keeper of the glass menagerie. Jessica Tandy does creditably as the genteel chatterbox mother, but the role created by Laurette Taylor seems to have shrunk. And David Wayne sounds too grandfatherly as the Gentleman Caller. Nonetheless, their overall...
VINCENT VAN GOGH: A SELF-PORTRAIT (Caedmon). Credit for this vivid auto-analysis must go first to Van Gogh for writing such searching, searing letters to his brother Theo, second to Lou Hazam for an artful job of editing, third to Lee J. Cobb for reading life into the result...