Word: helena
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...strongest point of all, however, is Helena. This is Helena's play; and in her lies the clue to its nature. If we disregard the incongruous ending, we are confronted with a "tragedy," or something perilously close to it; and Helena is the heroine. She is a noble, strong-willed personage, "the most virtuous gentlewoman that ever Nature had praise for creating." But, like the great tragic protagonists, she has a serious flaw of character: the lofty quality of Love becomes in her the lowly passion for Sex. And to achieve her goal, which is a perfectly legitimate...
...play it straight for the most part; though he was not afraid to introduce occasional bits of humor where they really belong, as in the phony prisoner-of-war inquisition. But, much to his credit, he had the good taste not to court a cheap laugh by having Helena make her final entrance obviously great with child...
Houseman has underlined the essential gravity in a number of ways. He had Dorothy Jeakins design the costumes for three important members of the Roussillon household--the Countess, Lafeu, and Helena herself--all in blacks and browns. And Will Steven Armstrong's settings for Rousillon are rather colorless (except in the finale), compared with the blues and golds of Paris and the burnt oranges and ochres of Florence. Also, much of Herman Chessid's background music, full of archaic touches right down to Landini and Burgundian cadences, is melancholia-tinged...
...Billings Gazette (circ. 36,002), Butte-Ana-conda Montana Standard (circ. 19,248) and Post (circ. 9,345), Missoula Missoulian (circ. 15,135) and Sentinel (circ. 3,272), Helena Independent-Record (circ. 7,708), Livingston Enterprise (circ...
...melodramatic style is well suited to convey the unreality of it all. Trotsky liked to say that the snowy volcanoes he could see from his windows were not extinct but dormant. But could the Red Napoleon really believe that his walled house was an Elba, not a St. Helena? He had tasted power, and missed it so much that he was delighted when simple Mexicans thought of him as a prince who had fallen (hence Wolfe's title...