Word: frenchness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Cariou is absolutely first-rate, though, in the long and difficult introspective soliloquy on "ceremony," and in the ensuing prayer ("O God of battles, steel my soldiers' hearts"). And his blunt wooing of the French princess in the final scene is wholly admirable. At the performance I attended, Carious was clearly off form in the noble "Saint Crispian" speech (scene caption, if you can believe it: "The Machine Creates the Believable Lie; Point of No Return"). In the line "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers," he even left out the middle phrase, which is probably the most...
...scenes involving the amusing low-life cronies Pistol, Bardolph, and Nym go well. Best of the bunch is Michael McGuire, who is (totes, and fires) Pistol. He has a fine comic sense, and spits out his consonants with relish. In his ludicrous run-in with the French soldier, though, the use of the French "moi" destroys Shakespeare's punning with "moy." Still, this performance compares favorably with the splendid Pistol of the late Ian Keith for the Cambridge Drama Festival here...
...play of this kind, women naturally have to stay out of the fore-ground. But Katharine (Roberta Maxwell), in a pink gown, and Alice (Patricia Elliott), in a pale but one, are delightful as the lady-in-waiting gives an English lesson to her French princess--with no attempt to disguise the scene's bawdy bilingual puns (Henry V is, as a matter of fact, the bawdiest of all the Histories). And Katharine is a charming model of modesty in the wooing scene...
...program calls him "Davy," through Davy in 2 Henry IV was Justice Shallow's servant and not Falstaff's). When the Boy is left alone with a field of corpses, he slowly wanders about, deeply, shaken and unhardened by his hands. Espying the approach of two enemy French soldiers, he scampers up the jungle-gym. But the soldiers pursue and overtake him, coldly spear him, and depart leaving one more corpse on the silent stage. None of this is specified, but it is deeply affecting...
...talks take place behind closed doors and last until about 3 p.m. About half an hour later there is a press conference in the French communications building across the river...