Word: hamlets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...HAMLET By William Shakespeare
Sarah Siddons was the first woman to play the role of Hamlet, in 1775. Her most illustrious female successor in the part was Sarah Bernhardt (1899), and in more recent decades, Eva Le Gallienne, Judith Anderson and Siobhan McKenna have appeared as the Prince of Denmark...
...accomplished actresses. Diane Venora, who is fumbling with Shakespeare's greatest role at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, is an unseasoned neophyte of 29 who is woefully miscast in this ever-so-demanding part. If the intent of the casting was to display the womanly aspects of Hamlet's nature, this production fails abominably. Venora is the most macho Hamlet to appear in years. For much of the evening, she struts about like a fascist bullyboy...
...Papp's humdrum direction, only the moments of lowdown violence stand out. Hamlet stabs Polonius (George Hall) as he stands behind the arras not once but repeatedly in an orgiastic frenzy. In the dueling finale with Laertes, Venora kicks him in the rear, scarcely the mark of the "noble Dane." In the bedroom scene, this Hamlet pummels Queen Gertrude (Kathleen Widdoes) so bruisingly that when the poignant line "How is it with you, lady?" is uttered, the audience breaks into semi-suppressed laughter, having witnessed the beating the lady has taken...
Caro's Johnson is, for the most part, a heel. But like many another great man, Johnson failed in his efforts to be thoroughly knavish. As a young teacher in a dusty South Texas hamlet, he drove his Mexican-American students relentlessly, and gave them self-respect and ambitions they had never known. In the book's most touching chapter, Caro describes Johnson's enduring love for Alice Glass, the high-spirited mistress and later the wife of Publisher and Oilman Charles Marsh. Their affair began in 1938, after Alice, then 26, met the tall, jug-eared...