Word: hepburn
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...while this production is only occasionally amusing, infrequently beautiful, and rarely poetic. It suffers from a Special Guest Star, Bert Lahr, who is billed above the title, and in larger type. The Stratford company has often before hurt itself with guests, the most notable case being the deplorable Miss Hepburn, apparently because they believe that good Shakespeare, well-acted, cannot attract audiences in this country without a name-star. (This is a demonstrably false proposition--Joseph Papp's New York productions refute it every summer...
Stratford, Conn.: Twelfth Night, The Tempest, and Antony and Cleopatra with Robert Ryan and Katharine Hepburn among the featured players...
...safe and sane to serve as popular fashion plates for Britain's enterprising young women. Instead they have turned to film stars. First, notes the British Harper's Bazaar, there were "the ubiquitous and slightly blurred carbons of Elizabeth Taylor ... Since then, passing through the [Audrey] Hepburn phase, we are now being subjected to miniature Bardots." Most favored place in the sun, where thousands of newly affluent working girls now spend their vacations, is Italy. Hand in hand with the vogue for espresso bars has come the Italian look, with stiletto heels for town, tapered trousers for jaunts...
Still, this production is not free from major disappointments, which could and should have been foreseen and forestalled by Landau and others concerned. The fault, dear reader, is not in ourselves, but in our stars--in this case, two Hollywood movie stars, Katharine Hepburn and Robert Ryan. They are both fine performers in their proper spheres, which in neither case includes Shakespeare. This unsuitability carries with it no ignominy; and the obvious devotion and will of these two cannot compensate. In the past decade, Miss Hepburn has played Rosalind, Portia, Beatrice, and Viola--none with great success. Ryan has done...
Shakespeare's Cleopatra is, as Charmian says, "a lass unparallel'd," but Miss Hepburn's is not, alas, unparallel'd. This Mt. Everest of female roles has foiled many a seasoned Shakespearean within recent memory, including Vivien Leigh. Eugenie Leontovich, Mary Newcombe, Dorothy Green, Katharine Cornell, Janet Achurch, Peggy Ashcroft, and Edith Evans (though the last two came close). The celebrated willing suspension of disbelief does not extend to accepting Miss Hepburn as a sensuous femme fatale who ages from 28 to 38. Only once is she amorously convincing, when she gradually moves in toward Antony ("Eternity...