Word: gurney
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Ruling Class tells the story of a Jack, a British aristocrat who also happens to think he's the god of love. When Jack's father, the 13th Earl of Gurney, dies by hanging himself accidentally--don't ask--Jack returns from the mental hospital to inherit his peerage. The other members of the Gurney family move to have Jack committed so that they can oversee the estate. While they plot for the majority of the first act, Jack preaches about love...
Sifton would steal the show were it not for Adam Barr, who steals it from him. Barr, in the role of Tucker, the Gurney family manservant, injects the production with a dose of much-needed comic relief. As Tucker degenerates from perfect manservant to drunken, pitiable fool, Barr maintains his command over the stage and the audience...
Compared to Barr and Sifton, the other members of the Gurney family--Peter Ocko as Jack's uncle, Leta Hong Fincher as Ocko's wife and *** Tremoulet as their son--pale. While the three are adequate to good, Barr and Sifton save the play from being painful to watch...
SWEET SUE A.R. Gurney Jr.'s wry May-September romance, with each of its two characters represented by two actors, not as a gimmick but as a reflection of the underlying theme: that the real action in anyone's life takes place inside his or her own head...
Jacobi, a Shakespearean best known in the U.S. for the title role in the PBS mini-series I, Claudius, again employs fidgety mannerisms. But Turing emerges distinctly in his fierce, futile independence. Although joined by fine, mostly British actors -- Jenny Agutter, Michael Gough and Rachel Gurney among them -- Jacobi gives what approximates a masterly one-man show. In a brilliantly calibrated scene near the end, he makes Turing's happiest moment also serve as a sad metaphor for his yearning, and inability, to communicate. He enfolds himself in the arms of a Greek youth, neither able to speak the other...