Word: chamberlaine
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fence about their ability to conjure spirits. That very perception of character seems to have guided Geraldine Page in a less malevolent but equally necromantic role, the ghost-summoning Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's larkish Blithe Spirit, which was revived on Broadway last week. The cast includes Richard Chamberlain, Blythe Danner and Judith Ivey, all in good form, but this is Page's show. In a career including eight Oscar nominations, culminating in a 1986 Best Actress award for The Trip to Bountiful, and countless memorable stage performances, Blithe Spirit stands as a highlight...
This decidedly common touch is in keeping with Director Brian Murray's sour vision. At the center of Blithe Spirit is a love triangle: smug, conventional Ruth Condomine (Ivey) is in love with her novelist husband Charles (Chamberlain); so is hoydenish Elvira (Danner), his late wife, whom Madame Arcati accidentally materializes; and all three of the Condomines are passionately in love with themselves. Most productions of Coward tend to be as glittery and brittle as spun glass. Murray brings the proceedings down to earth: these are not natural aristocrats but peasants with money and a veneer of polish, and when...
...beau ideal, just as petty as his wives, Murray helps diffuse the unattractive misogyny shot through virtually all of Coward's works. Still, this intelligent approach baffles some theatergoers and irritates others. It muffles many of the play's laughs and, more troublesome at the box office, keeps Chamberlain from maximizing his easy charm. Yet audiences who come to see him may depart delighted at having seen Page in full cry, sloshing her drinks onto people, cramming her mouth with sandwiches, then abruptly divining where her seance went wrong with a fierce delight that would surely have bewitched Coward himself...
...alto sax, as did Pam's chum Diana Macumber, who blows a baritone saxophone. Corbin Wyant, publisher of the Naples Daily News, contributes on trombone, along with Jim Kalvin, a marina owner, Michael Isabella, an embroidery manufacturer, and Scott Wise, a salesman. Two other salesmen, Roger Park and Steve Chamberlain, address their chops to trumpets, in the company of Mark Branson, a high school music teacher, Mark Fessenden, a florist, and Glen Harcus, a racing-car manufacturer. On bass is Dick Burchell, a salesman, and on piano is Dan Stefanko, a music teacher. The vocalist is Dante Lupi, from Astoria...
Plenty of women no doubt think that he has the perfect looks for the role, but Richard Chamberlain finds the idea of playing the world's greatest lover something of an anachronism. "They just don't grow characters like Casanova anymore," he observes. "His kind of life would never happen now, but he is a great deal of fun." No kidding. The script for Casanova, a three-hour abc movie to appear later this season, calls for Chamberlain to seduce such beauties as Faye Dunaway and Sylvia Kristel (Emmannuelle). Nice work if you can cut it, but Casanova may have...