Word: charm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...charm of Gilbert and Sullivan is, after all, Sullivan, and the orchestra for this performance bubbles. The members say that it works because they've played together for all the rehearsals and performances. Also because of the direction of John Posner, who's led the HGSP orchestra out of its mid-'70s doldrums. The theater walls are peeling a bit this year, but the Agassiz still drops this orchestra endearingly in the audience's lap. Too bad the players read the Sunday Times or Weber when they're not actually playing...
Part of the trouble is in the writing and part in the playing. For a boy-meets-girl play to exercise its potential magic, there must be beguiling charm and a contagious affection. Farrow and Perkins project neither. Farrow's Phoebe is naive without the endearing thread of home spun innocence. Her vocal habit of putting equal stress on each syllable, word and sentence leads to aural torpor. Perkins' Jason is waspish and petulant with out a trace of roguish lovability...
...experience, as a way to pass four years. Harvard is over-estimated. It is no doubt the greatest university in the world in many respects, and certainly extraordinarily efficient at grinding out hard-working professionals. But at a basic human level Harvard is sadly devoid of charm or style. Students there are mostly uptight, immature and inarticulate...
...crown of the first week's operatic offerings was the Figaro-tender, witty, effortlessly buoyant. The spectacle of servants outwitting their masters, so inflammatory in Mozart's day, was given charm and point by Baritone Walter Berry, as a rather phlegmatic Figaro, and Soprano Lucia Popp, as his pert fiancee. Baritone Hans Helm and especially Soprano Gundula Janowitz, as the count and countess, played along with aristocratic good grace...
...that matter, Hagman does everything just right, and the chief joy of Dallas is watching him play an overstuffed lago in a stetson hat. Mean? There ain't nobody meaner than this dude. But Hagman plays him with such obvious zest and charm that he is impossible to dislike. Why was lago so evil? Hagman knows: it's fun being bad. And that is the secret the creators of Dallas have discovered too. Audiences applaud the good guys, but they watch the bad ones, hour after hour after hour. -Gerald Clarke