Word: gambone
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Michael Gambon is one of the best, though American audiences have seen little of him. Acclaimed for his work in everything from Uncle Vanya to several of Alan Ayckbourn's most provocative comedies (A Chorus of Disapproval, Man of the Moment), Gambon is known here mainly as the star of Dennis Potter's admired TV mini-series, The Singing Detective. Now he's making his long-overdue U.S. stage debut, in a Broadway production of David Hare's Skylight. All the ingredients are there for stage magic; unfortunately, too many of the wires and trapdoors are clearly visible...
...play's spareness leaves the audience with entirely too much time to admire the acting. There is certainly plenty to admire about Gambon: the resonant baritone, the fleshy, middle-aged face that can shed years in one high-spirited moment, his improbable lightness on his feet. Yet each bit of physical business--an almost coquettish kick back of one leg, a sudden palsy in his hand as he breaks into sobs--seems too italicized, as if to announce: Great Acting Present. Gambon's unheralded co-star, Lia Williams (who also played the role in London), gets closer to our hearts...
Based on a moldering script by director Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin, Toys is informed by a sensibility still more antique: 1960s peacenik. It posits a conflict for control of a family toy company between a near holy fool (Robin Williams) and his uncle, a retired Army general (Michael Gambon) who wants to convert the plant to military-weapons production. Both are predictable types. Their employees are so sweetly innocent one longs for Hoffa's Teamsters to come in and give them mean lessons. But everyone's main function is to trigger special effects and lend scale to production designer...
...portrayed Italy as the epitome of treachery and mayhem; in this tale, although the McCrackens are enmeshed with five Italian gangster brothers (played by the same quick-changing actor), the real savagery is British born and bred. London's production, directed by the author, had the advantage of Michael Gambon in the lead. His Jack McCracken was a true reformer, alight with the intensity of a zealot, and his pain at being maneuvered into compromise upon compromise was almost unbearable to watch...
HEAT OF THE DAY (PBS, Sept. 30, 9 p.m. on most stations). For those who like their mysteries solved in one evening, Michael Gambon plays a suspicious stranger who latches on to a divorcee in World War II London, in this Masterpiece Theater drama scripted by Harold Pinter...