Word: duked
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...taken this troublesome text and given it a high-spirited once-over. Director Bill Cain, like the Duke in the play, sets up his machinery and watches it work--and he's more successful than the Duke ever can be. But he lets the audience fend for itself in the play's moral wilderness, relying on energy and competence rather than a consistent interpretation to pull them through. To be fair, any attempt at consistency in Measure for Measure would end up forcing parts of the play out of shape; but if directors never even tried, the play might just...
...neglect of the play is understandable--Shakespeare never painted a more thoroughly ugly, corrupt society than the Vienna of Measure for Measure. The rulers are hypocrites, the police are incompetent, and even the clowns are annoying. The Duke, a Prospero-like character who stage-manages much of the plot, takes a good look around his city and decides it needs a house-cleaning. But he's too good-hearted to enforce the stringent laws himself, so he abdicates in favor of his deputy Angelo, leaving to wander the country as a monk...
...scene of their first meeting is grippingly paced, starting and ending slowly to let all the implications sink in. But as the Duke begins pulling strings to end the story before it runs on for ten acts instead of five, the production turns more superficial. Thomas Apple's Duke is nothing to be unhappy about--he's smooth, fatherly and reassuring. But Shakespeare wrote the part as a playwright's nightmare of schemes gone bad, plots out of control. Apple remains blithe, unperturbed, not the sort of Machiavellian man you'd look towards to resolve the mess at the play...
...John Wayne, 71, the legendary "Duke" of Hollywood filmdom; with cancer; in Los Angeles. In a 9½-hour operation, Wayne's stomach was removed, but laboratory tests showed that the malignancy had spread to his gastric lymph nodes. The patient, whose cancerous left lung was removed in 1964, accepted the news with true grit. "I've licked the Big ¶before," he said. "And I'll lick it again...
Edward the King (Wednesdays, 8 p.m.). This year, as in the several preceding, the best shows on American television will probably have British accents. Upstairs, Downstairs has already returned, to loud hosannas. I, Claudius will be back in June, and The Duchess of Duke Street will carry on with new adventures next fall. This week what could be called the Mobil Network-a grouping of stations put together by the big oil company-will launch one of the most engrossing series of all, a 13-part program based on the life of Edward...