Word: emlyn
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Last year Playwright-Actor Emlyn (Night Must Fall) Williams, a rabid Dickensian, got the idea, not just of repeating the Dickens readings, but of impersonating the author-clothes, whiskers and all. A hit in London, Williams-like Dickens-began a U.S. tour in Boston, last week reached Manhattan. His success on Broadway was more than a stunt: it neatly blended novelty with nostalgia, proved Dickens to be a "dramatic" novelist, Williams to be a colorful Dickens in a studiously varied program...
There was nowhere near a capacity audience at the Plymouth last night to hear Emlyn Williams, the Welsh actor, give the premiere of a program of readings from Dickens which he has been preparing for over a year. This was a great pity, both because an unfilled house dampens the spirits of performer and audience alike, and because the quality of Mr. Williams' rendition deserved a far more enthusiastic response...
...cuckoldry and keeping the slapstick busy, the picture provides some mild amusement. Its single innovation proves its saving grace: the pivotal character who causes all the trouble is no disembodied voice this time but a quite fleshly rogue, played with jaunty elegance by Britain's Actor-Playwright Emlyn (Night Must Fall) Williams...
...Emlyn Williams, who played the lead in "Montserrat" this season on Broadway, has undertaken a triple assignment in this film. He has not only written and directed "The Woman of Dolwyn," but is also co-starred as Lord Lancashire's agent in charge of buying out the landowners of the village. In all three capacities he has performed sensitively and perhaps even poetically for three-quarters of the picture. His conclusion, however, in which an almost saintly village matron releases the floodgates of a dam to inundate her beloved Dolwyn, seems incredibly out of keeping with the rest...
...Montserrat has been fattened up by giving the six pawns in the game their grim, gaudy exit scenes as people. As melodrama, Montserrat, though sometimes talky, is oftener tense. As writing, it has much of Adapter Hellman's sharpness and bite: in particular, her villain (well-played by Emlyn Williams) brings a fine sardonic gusto to his villainies...