Word: hermia
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Outlet for Energy. Hermia's altruism is untypical of Compton-Burnett's predatory female dictators. Eliza is more in character: "Autocratic by nature, she had become impossibly so, and had come to find criticism a duty, an outlet for energy." When Hamilton's first letter of proposal to Hermia arrives, Eliza wants to answer it herself. When a second comes, she opens it and attempts to hide it. Like her predecessors in earlier books, Eliza is not only shameless, but awash with grandly rhetorical self-pity: "Years of care, of asking little for myself and accepting less...
...Last and the First departs from the author's past works, it is in its relative compassion. Not that Dame Ivy went soft. But she endowed Hermia, a powerful woman, with both a healthy outlook and a promising future. In a way, like Eliza, she was surrendering some of her sovereignty over her people, and a little welcome warmth came...
...lovers, particularly Thomas Babe and Joan Tolentino (Hermia and Lysander) evoked consistent and deserved laughter from the happy Opening Night audience, as did Avreml (Avreml!?) Friedman as a Yiddish Peter Quintz...
...cast as large as that of The Fairy Queen there is bound to be a bit of talent, and the Lowell House production is no exception. On the the Thespian side, elocution reigns supreme in Linda DeCoff as Hermia, while rich voices can be heard from Margaret Santi (Titania) and Ray Healy (Oberon), both of whom, though lacking subtlety, look every bit the patricians they are supposed to be. Mary King Austin plays Helena as a dumb blond with her hair done up--a sort of cross between Judy Holiday and Sandy Dennis...
Robert Fletcher has garbed the aristocracy in Empire costumes of the Napoleonic period, with an emphasis on brown, white, and gold. The two love-smitten maidens wear identical low-necked, high-waisted white gowns, with a blue sash for Helena and a pink one for Hermia. The "mechanicals" are outfitted in rough reds, oranges, and yellows. Fletcher had, paradoxically, a field day with the forest folk--Titania and her fairies in green and pink, the bicorn Oberon and his winged retinue in sequined blues...