Word: falstaff
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...Part I (by William Shakespeare; produced by Maurice Evans). Though Henry IV contains the greatest comic figure in English literature, it has been produced on Broadway only once (for a week in 1926) in 43 years. One reason: the whole play cannot be performed in a single evening; another: Falstaff is not only the greatest but the fattest of comic figures, and a severe physical strain on any actor who, all padded and stuffed, impersonates him. For that weighty reason, Maurice Evans announced he would play Falstaff for only four weeks...
There are other reasons than Falstaff why Henry IV* is richly worth reviving. One of Shakespeare's most vigorous and varied chronicle plays, it rings with martial clamor, abounds in striking personages, lights up momentous times. In Part I, the rebellion of the Percys and their confederates against Henry IV opposes the heedless, gallant Hotspur to the cooler, better-balanced Prince Hal. There is rousing theatre in Hotspur's eloquent defiance; warmth in his half-boyish, half-intense love scene with his wife; pathos in his death...
...Most important event of the Metropolitan's week was the revival, after 14 years, of Verdi's Falstaff. To sing its title role, Baritone Lawrence Tibbett donned a five-bushel stuffed stomach and so plastered his face with make-up that only his lips and eyeballs could move. Getting him into his costume took four men an hour and forty-five minutes. Tibbett himself sweated away five pounds during the performance. The audience, delighted by the ingratiating and sophisticated Verdi score, thought the effort worthwhile...
...productions (all revivals): Orpheus and Eurydice, Falstaff, Louise, Boris Godounoff, Thais, Fidelia...
...make-believe is that she has created, out of one part pious bluenose and one part murderous bandit, a lively, attractive, fun-loving Tom Rover. Nobody even bothers to wonder whether Thomas Howard might not be a sniveling hypocrite: at worst, he would seem to justify his forays as Falstaff justified his thefts: " 'Tis my vocation, Hal. 'tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation.'' For almost three acts Jesse James labors with gusto. But History and the Wages of Sin have to win out, and Jesse is finally shot...