Word: goneril
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...action. He incarnates the flame of truth and beauty invested in him by the playwright to be passed on to the audience. Thus one can say that Scofield is perfectly all right as Lear, that MacGowran is a good Fool and that Irene Worth is especially good as Goneril, the oldest and ugliest daughter. Then, too, Alan Webb sensitively portrays the Duke of Gloucester, whose eyes are gouged out with stomach-churning realism. But the instantaneous afterthought is that though these actors have done absolutely superb work onstage, a filmgoer who sees only films would never guess it from this...
...story is uncomplicated by subtlety. Maxie the daughter of an appliance dealer and his cigarette-smoking wife, is an ungrateful child. She is a Goneril who poisons herself rather than her father, although the latter alternative is never far from her mind. She sleeps around, she drops acid in the very bedroom in which her parents conceived her (oh horrible irony) and finally, even after a session with a helpful and understanding psychiatrist, she has a monumental bummer. Only the shock treatment of her mother, who reminds her of all the sacrifices she has made for poor little Maxie...
...crown and yet retain power in his person alone. Cobb reveals how the fool in Lear is intrinsically a child. This 80-year-old is an eight-year-old in disguise, throwing temper tantrums against daughters whom he has naively empowered to switch roles with him. Regan and Goneril are, in effect, a stern, unyielding common mother fiercely chastising an obstreperous child. Cobb is equally good at conveying the sense of age: he is old inside as well as outside. The years are numbered in his white hairs, but there is also the anguish of diminished manhood, the baffled rage...
...Gielgud-like delivery of the Shakespearean line. Rene Auberjonois as the Fool is a supple mime of wisdom and Stephen Elliott's Gloucester is a man of probity incarnate, woefully abused. Barbette Tweed's Cordelia is appropriately sweet and good; Patricia Elliott as Regan and Marilyn Lightstone as Goneril are properly serpentine. Only Stacy Keach disappoints, by failing into smirky stage-villain mannerisms as Gloucester's bastard son Edmund. His performance misses the point of Shakespeare's transcendent vision which makes earthly villainy pale before the terrors meted out to men by fate...
...seem content merely to don the assorted masks that Carnovsky parcelled out. This foible seemed the particular property of the villains. Matt Conley in the most unkindest role of all, the bastard Edmund, exercised enough wit and restraint to stay this side of melodrama. But Regan (Phoebe Brand) and Goneril (Ludi Claire) ranted and raved, groaned and grimaced. Robert Benedict's Oswald was arch and despicable, Nick Smith's Cornwall took appropriate relish in kicking out Gloucester's eyes; these actors' evil was far too lunatic to be cruel. The audience tittered...