Word: devlin
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Macbeth, in the person of William Devlin, is still strutting on the Brattle stage. An interesting modern version, evenings...
...touch with the great forces of Nature, a man whose oncoming madness and rage are reflected by nature in a terrible thunderstorm, a man who speaks habitually to the gods. An actor, must have great and special powers to do anything like justice to the part. William Devlin does; his Lear is a tremendous performance, fully worthy of Shakespeare's tremendous creation...
...curious that Devlin should be so completely successful in capturing the heart of Lear. I don't think that he is a transcendently great actor outside of Lear. His performance as Mac-both, which the Brattle Theatre is putting on concurrently with "King Lear," is no more than good. Many actors, I am sure, could equal his job in this play, and not a few could do better...
...that he overplays--and only the cold at heart, those unwilling to suspend disbelief, can say this. In a sense he does overplay: his Lear speaks often in great half-sobs, often raises his arms to heaven, often staggers about the stage. If Lear were an ordinary man, Devlin would stand convicted of the grossest heroics. But Lear is not ordinary: his rages are monumental, 'his sufferings monumental. One must overplay, overreach oneself to attain such lofty heights--Devlin does...
...rest of the cast seems to me to have improved since the Brattle last put on "Lear" with Devlin in 1950. Thayer David does as fine a job as I have ever seen him do in the role of Gloucester. Jerry Kilty, as the Fool, is brilliant--he manages to make something out of a character that is almost impossible to put over to modern audiences. Likewise, to a lesser degree, does Paul Sparer make something out of nothing--he brings a real personality to the simple, unsubtle Kent. Robert Fletcher as Edgar and Albert Duclos as Oswald round...