Word: empresse
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...Within this framework of difficulties, however, the production is admirable. The director, Roger Graef, treats horror boldly and hardly ever sacrifices his characters to a mere spectacular surface. Although his first act is occasionally loose, his later treatment is strong. The brilliantly ironic scene in which the vicious empress and her two sons visit Titus disguised as Revenge, Rape, and Murder is directed superbly. Lit in dim red and blue, which effectively decreases the awkward closeness to the audience, the scene shows excellent interplay among the enemies as Titus feigns madness and delicately winds revenge around his visitors...
Marcus, brother to Titus, is created with considerable 'dignity by Arthur Lewis, as is Titus's son Lucius by John Hallowell. The empress' two lecherous sons are delightfully costumed and, most of the time, well acted. The elder, as played by James Martin, is properly Presley. Michael Kenny plays a clown, who enters twice with exquisite gayety...
...night of July 17, 1918, ostensibly on their way to exile or imprisonment, the mild-mannered Czar of All the Russias, his German-born Empress, their five children, their family doctor, a chambermaid of the royal household, their cook and the Czar's English valet were all herded together in the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg (now Sverdlovsk) and sprayed with Bolshevik gunfire. That much of one of the most brutal murders of modern times has been recorded as fact in all the history books. A vital footnote to the bloody night has remained ever since...
...just played host to Britain's bouncing Edward, Prince of Wales, gave a royal welcome to the Grand Duchess. Many of those firmest in proclaiming her authenticity were distant relatives and friends of her supposed family-but one branch, the German House of Hesse, to which the Empress of Russia had belonged, declined to accept the newcomer. The Czar, it was said, had deposited some 20 million rubles in England before the revolution, and the House of Hesse wanted to assure itself a prior right to the money...
...King and I. Helen Hayes, never bad, has nearly always been better than she is as the iron dowager who shuts out the world. Her stern voice and manner fit the part, but her face, a bit rosy, rounded, and American, rarely becomes the countenance of an empress...