Word: gloriana
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...DIMLY LIT corner, a courtier clutches a skull and caresses its sockets. Alas, poor Yorick? No--this time the hero is Vindice (vengeance) and skull is that of his love, Gloriana, poisoned by the wicked Duke. Cyril Tourner's The Revenger's Tragedy, while reminiscent of Hamlet, is of a distinct genre: it is not so much a tragedy as a horror play in which vengeance, severing the ties of love and kinship, sweeps its victims toward their own destruction...
...characters come close to achieving that timelessness and universality which make a character endure. Ben Evett, who plays the role of Vindice with puckish bravado, and Peter Hansen, the Duke's bastard son of conniving mien, carry the play through its weaker moments. When Vindice again draws forth Gloriana's skull--this time as a weapon to poison the Duke, who unsuspecting that she is only a "shell of death" will try to steal a kiss from her in a dark corridor--he handles the scene with a deft blend of madness and humor that make the murder believable...