Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Viola, who spends almost the whole play disguised as the pageboy Cesario, we have Lynn Redgrave, attired in an aquamarine suit and sporting a head of short red hair. She brings a surprisingly forceful voice and a sure comic instinct. It is fun to watch her lapse from her assumed machismo--as when, on exclaiming of Olivia, "She loves me sure," she girlishly claps her hands over her face, or repeatedly swoons at the prospect of having to duel with Sir Andrew. Her performance perhaps owes something to her recent portrayal of another witty and manly woman, Shaw's Saint...
Even as good an actress as Jean Marsh is not well cast as Viola. She has some fine comic bits, to be sure, but her studied performance in general lacks Redgrave's sparkle. And she scants much of the lovely verse--such as the "damask cheek" speech, which she virtually throws away...
...through a repertoire of anywhere between 32 and 35 songs (the program lists 35, but they skipped three) in a briskly-paced two-hour show. Almost all are excellent singers, and even those who don't quite measure up vocally more than make up for it with stage presence, comic sense, and charm. Staged in a mixed dinner theater (the words strike terror into the hearts of serious actors and patrons alike) and cabaret atmosphere--both drinks and dinner are available in addition to the admission fee--this excellent revue moves almost effortlessly from one song to the next...
This show is a roller coaster of merriment, with hairpin turns of plot, zany swoops of emotion and a breakneck tempo. But for fanciers of substance in entertainment, soap bubbles would be solider. Kaufman and Hart twisted their comic vise on Hollywood at just the time the movie colony was panicking over emergent speech. Jolson had sung; could Shakespeare be far behind? In panic, Hollywood raided Broadway for its voices...
...Peking Opera take over, the pace speeds up. A pair of dancer-acrobat-mimes, on a fully lit stage, pantomime a sword fight as it might be conducted between opponents who cannot see each other in a pitch-black room. The movement is wondrously intricate, breathtakingly quick-and hugely comic. In another excerpt, called Monkey Makes Havoc in Heaven, the stage is filled with men, tumbling, bounding, flailing at one another in a skirmish between the forces of a Peer Gyntish Monkey King and a Jade Emperor whose court has been invaded by the delightfully wicked, white-faced simian. Martial...