Word: dion
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WILLIAM D. DION...
...commandingly icy meanness to Clara while hinting at a lost tenderness. In recent seasons, John McMartin has established himself as an actor of distinctive range. He has played the disenchanted author in Follies, the skeptical servant Sganarelle in Moliere's Don Juan, and the mask-divided soul Dion Anthony in O'Neill's The Great God Brown. Now, as the hero of The Visit, he is initially bland, wistfully nostalgic about his early romance, then terrified and finally stoically resigned. Paradoxically, his work, as well as that of the rest of the cast, refutes the play...
...perhaps electronic rock, probably attempting a new kind of orchestral sound, and a simpler folk-rock emerging from the music of people like Jesse Colin Young, Jerry Garcia, and Robbie Robertson. After all, when a year passes in which Bobby Darin, Robert Thomas Velline (Bobby Vee), Rick Nelson, and Dion (of the Belmonts) try to cash in on folk music, it is reasonable to claim some movement from rock to folk--wherever that movement may finally lead...
...Great God Brown, currently being revived by Manhattan's New Phoenix Company, is a compendium of these aspects of the lesser O'Neill. It is a drama of split personality. The protagonists, Dion Anthony (John McMartin) and William Brown (John Glover), are physically two but psychically one. The play is a duel of opposing forces within the same being. Anthony stands for Art untrammeled by mundane affairs; Brown for the etiolated Babbittry of Commerce. But Dion is himself divided, his first name standing for Dionysius, the creative-erotic life force, and his last name Anthony for "a saint...
While iron-stomached culture hawks might salivate in the presence of such gaudy symbols, it only makes the cast's eternal fight so much more valiant. They have no choices but to flash around their stylized plastic masks and they do so with considerable cleverness. Only John McMartin as Dion Anthony has difficulty finessing his way through the surrealistic script. The New Phoenix's leading lady. Katherine Helmond, does well in the role of Margaret, and Marilyn Sokol is fine as Cybel, although offhand it's difficult to picture how an Earth Mother should be. Best of all is John...