Word: hortensio
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...most of Shakespeare's comedies, revolves around a double courtship. The two daughters of the rich Baptista, Katherina and Bianca, are up for grabs; but the beautiful Bianca cannot marry until her sharp-tongued older sister is suitably bethrothed. The three suitors for Bianca's hand, Lucentio, Gremio and Hortensio, stake the gold-digging fool Petruchio into marrying Katherina and clearing the path to wed Bianca. While Petruchio engages in verbal duels with Kate, Lucentio and Hortensio disguise themselves and woo Bianca in secret...
...choices of thirties models for all the characters are generally very clever, Baptista, the rich landowner, becomes the baggy pants petty bourgeois proprietor of the theatre. Played by Jim Kaufman, he is the very model of an alcoholic crud. Hortensio as done by director McDonough becomes a pseudo Mafioso a proto-Don Corleone complete with big blue suit and loud tie, Lucentio (Kevin Fennessy) and Bianca (Marianne Adams) are the very models of squeaky clean 30s youth...
...their deeper intents are not even revealed, much less frightening. Antonio Dajer's Baptista is a put upon father who never manages to rule Marre's Kate. Lois Rosenberg treats Bianca's duplicity as a child's game. And Kerry Konrad and Stephen Toope play the suitors, Lucentio and Hortensio, with surface flair but little depth. When one ends up with Bianca and the other with a willful widow, the marriages strike one not as unfortunate mistakes but merely as their just deserts...
...music demonstration, Hortensio (Todd Drexel) at least actually plays the 'cello on stage. And when Lucentio (Robert Benedict) pretends to give Bianca a Latin lesson, "Hic ibat Simois," etc. has been supplanted by "Gallia est omnis," etc. on the undoubtedly accurate grounds that Caesar's De Bello Gallico will be more familiar to audiences than Ovid's Heroides. One wonders, however, why any of these three gentlemen would want to marry Bianca, for Geneva Bugbee makes her an insipid nullity...
...Blue, is the donation of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pulitzer, who are notable collectors of modern art. The woman was obviously posed in a chair, but she is painted so that she seems to stand parallel to the wall, in a manner reminiscent of El Greco's Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. The intricate composition contrasts the arabesques on the left side of the canvas with the straighter verticals on the right, and is painted in a startingly original color scheme, full of blues, lavenders, and canary yellow. This is major Picasso and an important addition to the Fogg's collection...