Word: gloriosus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Comedy tonight it is. Jeff Zax gives an excellent performance as Pseudolus, obsessed with one thing: getting his freedom. He conceives a plot to get the girl for his master Hero and his life for himself, circumventing Roman tradition and the captain Miles Gloriosus (among others) in the process. Zax has about one sober moment on stage when, as Prologus, he sets the scene and asks for the blessing of Thespis. But there is a nuttiness in his eyes which leaves you with the feeling that he's not all that serious. It turns out that he wasn...
...adds just the right dash of street hip, and being skinny with black moustache, owes more than just a nod to Groucho in his delivery. Vincent DiBenedetto, Marc Johnson and Philip Murray take their bit parts (they sing triple as Lycus's eunuchs, slaves and the soldiers of Miles Gloriosus) and polish them until they gleem...
...gutteral huff, and his singing is so stiff as to be wooden. Diane Nabatoff as Domina, his wife, does a generally good job, but is hampered because she and Knickerbocker never seem to develop the right rapport. Jim Pullam brings only braggadocio to his characterization of Miles Gloriosus; it's a tough role to sing, but Pullam can't quite hit the bass notes...
...frustrated Cariou looks up and beds down his ex-mistress (Glynis Johns). She is an actress fabled for her affairs on-and offstage who is currently pleasuring herself with a hussar (Lawrence Guittard). This is our old friend from Roman comedy, the miles gloriosus, the soldier puffed up with vanity, rage (when he encounters Cariou), and the sternly ludicrous conceit that his wife (Patricia Elliot) and his mistress ought to be equal paragons of fidelity. This tangled skein of love and its counterfeits is happily unraveled in Act II at the country house of the actress's mother (Hermione...