Word: devlin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Bradley said that "King Lear" was too huge for the stage. He would presumably have applied this dictum to the stage of the Brattle Theatre Company. Yet that group, with the invaluable assistance of William Devlin, has managed to confine this great play within the limits of its stage. It has achieved that rarely attempted, even more rarely successful, feat a good production of Lear...
...Bedlam, sometimes an old man, sometimes a king above men-who is most closely connected with Nature. Therefore, if the play is to mean anything, it must have a Lear who can speak with Nature, pluck the infinite out of the false ceiling of the Brattle Theatre. William Devlin is this...
...stature of an expression of Nature; his "Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, and then no breath at all? over the corpse of Cordelia was pure pathos. In portraying the fall of Lear from king to disillusioned father, to madman, to dying, bereaved old man, Devlin combines the grandeur of the king and the weakness of the old man. He binds the magnificent curse of his miscreant daughter Generil ("Into her womb convey sterility"), and the moving vision of life in prison with Cordelia ("So we'll live and pray, and sing, and tell old tales...
...most direct consequence of Devlin's brilliant performance is the shadowing effect it has on the part of Edmund, who is placed dramatically at the head of the opposition to Lear. Albert Marre was too listlessly evil to stand out sharply from the hard wickedness of Generil and Regan, not to speak of maintaining himself against Lear, Robert Fletcher, as Edgar and "Tom O' Bedlam, Slightly undermined a fine performance by a tendency to a forensic delivery not compatible with the honest simplicity of the part...
...been enough suffering, so that the later hanging of Cordelia and the expiration of Lear will have a more powerful tragic effect. The actors fail to build up this feeling of satiety, so that Lear's entrance, bearing Cordelia, does not have the powerful impact is should have, until Devlin rebuilds the structure himself...