Word: caesar
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...time Her First Roman makes Broadway, all that is Bernard Shaw's will likely have been exorcised and the show no worse off for it. As is, this musicalized Caesar and Cleopatra is on so un-Shavian a wavelength that the original dialogue (nowhere close to the 80 per cent once required of Shaw's adapters) serves as Champagne to a gasoline engine. Songwriter-book writer Ervin Drake has made no try at the worshipful style of My Fair Lady: instead his idea is to set a romance in ancient Egypt and happily let it go at that. With...
...have nothing going for them and should be ditched on that count. The first is corny, the second ludicrous, the third irrelevant, the fourth bad, and the fifth incomprehensible. By way of compensation, I'd suggest that if ever a name deserved to light a lyric, "Ftatateeta" does; that Caesar and Rufio might voice their contradictory opinions of vengeance and clemency in song; and that Caesar might urge Cleopatra to be a proper queen likewise. As long as Drake doesn't appear overly concerned about the incongruity of Shavian speeches and standard musical comedy numbers, he has lots of opportunities...
Benthall, the director, has made fine use of the surroundings provided him, and can be criticized only for not yet having coaxed any really sparkling performances from his excellent cast. Richard Kiley as Caesar and Bruce MacKay as Rufio are the best of a dry, consistent lot; the most notable object of disappointment is Leslie Uggams, who failed to convince me she can sing. Claudia McNeil, sadly, has little...
...Julius Caesar, a literatus of distinction, wrote the history of his empire-building campaigns himself. President Lyndon Johnson, who prefers to use house writers, set the vast mechanism of the Federal Government to work chronicling his days in power. In a flurry of memoranda, agency aediles were told recently to put their top men to the task of recording the accomplishments Annorum Presidentis 1963-68. They were also instructed to send drafts to the White House for evaluation. When completed, presumably before January 20, the epic will be shipped to Austin, where posterity will be able to consult the instant...
...despite the play's title, Androcles and the Lion are not the chief characters. In this respect, the work is like, say, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Clymbeline, and Henry IV. Although not appearing until after the Prologue, Lavinia is Shaw's leading character and spokesman. In his Postscript, Shaw calls her "a clever and fearless freethinker." She is one of his huge gallery of extraordinary women--a group unsurpassed by any other twentieth-century dramatist. Lavinia falls into the category of those persons passionately driven by con-science and commitment--like his Saint Joan, his Major Barbara...