Word: devlin
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Latest addition to the LP catalogue is Brattle Theatre Classics, a series of readings from great plays which has just begun with "King Lear." On this new recording, William Devlin, who played Lear with such distinction here this winter, trumpets the major speeches of the old but unwise King. Members of the Brattle Company read around him to give an inkling of the plot. You may wonder who "Poor Tom" is, or how Gloucester lost his eyes, for such details are unexplained, but Devlin's Lear is all-important. The other characters only guide the course of his catastrophe...
...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...