Word: gruff
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...commented, "All my articulate Christians have different enthusiasms." And in the case of Ferrovius he allowed a would-be martyr to fail at the moment of trial by committing wholesale slaughter. In a striking change from his other roles for the Festival, Charles Cioffi gives Ferrovius a low, gruff voice and makes him a quick-tempered powerhouse, an ogre. Later, when he returns from the arena brandishing a bloody sword, he makes a wonderful effect not by howling, "Cut off this right hand," but by whispering it in self-horror. The director has undercut one of Shaw's points...
...first American to head the Curia's Congregation of Sacraments, which ensures the correct administration of the seven sacraments. Died. Richard Maney, 77, dean of Broadway pressagents, who in 50 years beat the drums for some 250 plays (including My Fair Lady, Camelot); of pneumonia; in Norwalk, Conn. Gruff, unfailingly honest and highly literate, Maney assailed the theater for its "notorious affair with mediocrity," and engaged in monumental bouts with such employers as Orson Welles and Billy Rose. "Producing," he once said, "is the Mardi Gras of the professions- anyone with a mask and enthusiasm can bounce into...
...actor imperceptibly fuses artifice and reality. He dominates the stage with feral tenacity, and there is an uncannily mnemonic effect in his feat of physical resemblance. The pudgy hands thrust the walking stick forward like an advance scout probing enemy territory; the pouty lips nurse the huge cigar; the gruff, lisping voice rasps out even cadences like waves beating on the shore. Many of the words he is given to say, however, seem in closer accord with der Führer Prinzip than with bluff British pragmatism. Never for a moment is the playgoer unaware that this is a Teutonic...
Leslie Braverman, a celebrated critic, dies suddenly at 41. Among the mourners are four of his friends: a flamboyantly mustachioed fund raiser (George Segal); a gruff, insecure womanizer (Jack Warden) who, upon hearing the bad news while in bed with his girl, dutifully removes his toupee; an oleaginous scholar of comic books (Sorrell Booke); and a Talmudic professor-lecturer (Joseph Wiseman) who wears an expression of perpetual disgust, as if he were forever smelling fried...
...over the windows. Peter, on his own initiative, dusted off the colored lithograph that hangs over the bar and also dusted off the photograph of old John McNulty that hangs beside Kennedy's picture. McNulty, who had gone to the Boston Latin School, was quite a man. Big, gruff, and hearty, he was quite a wit and was responsible for the sign over the barroom door. He died last year...