Word: ferrers
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Bucking the hard realism of France at the turn of the century, Rostand came on the theatrical scene as an entertainer. His flamboyant wit, despite its aborted, cloying idealism, makes for brilliant entertainment in, the deft hands of Jose Ferrer in this week's opening of Cyrano de Bergerac...
...Enter Ferrer, a rare genius in the American theatre. This is the man who made Margaret Webster's Othello with his real and living Iago. He has at least equalled that triumph with Cyrano. This character, plagued by an obscene nose, must be "all things." After the first act, Ferrer makes the spectator forget that nose. Declaiming with high spirit, he leaves the audience gasping at the arched flight of his slick patter. He is meant to be a swashbuckler, and Ferrer gives it everything as he swaggers and gesticulates in the mixed role of philosopher, poet, soldier, and self...
Strange Fruit (adapted from Lillian Smith's novel by the author, with the assistance of Esther Smith; produced by José Ferrer), on the stage, as in book form, pulls no sociological punches. But the play lacks dramatic punch. A fledgling Broadway playwright, Lillian Smith too often wobbles in her storytelling, too often fails to pick up the dramatic scent. An unconverted novelist, she has gamely but unwisely tried to transfer to the stage the whole life of a Georgia town. The result is far less spacious than sprawling...
...well-known story of Strange Fruit is, to be sure, a steadily enlarging one. The star-crossed love of white Tracy Deen (Melchor Ferrer) and Negro Nonnie Anderson (Jane White) widens out beyond personal tragedy into social tragedy. The rooted Southern prejudices, the rankling inequalities, the violence that leads Nonnie's brother to murder Tracy, the feeling that leads a mob to lynch an innocent Negro for the crime-all these are like pieces in a sociological puzzle...
...Jose Ferrer, playing the wily villain of the play, Iago, threatens at various moments to steal the show from Robeson. He portrays with evil genius the wicked shrewdness and the twisted mind that produces the tragedy of "Othello" by mastering the simple strength of the Moor. By a crook of the finger, a clearing of the throat, a lift of the eyebrow, Ferrer probes the depths of the villain's complicated character more thoroughly than could a less capable actor by an entire speech...