Word: humes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...play's overall success in its Boston production with the Stratford National Company of Canada must be attributed to a remarkable acting job by Hume Cronyn, just as Alex McGowan's tour de force "made" the show in London and on Broadway. Cronyn is superb, biting off bittersweet epithets, swivelling quickly, daintily crossing his legs on the Papal throne, as a long cigarette dangles from his fingers. Cronyn's determined effort to project nuance into Rolfe's fantasies generate an ironic tension. He makes Rolfe more interesting than the play might lead us to believe...
RESERVATIONS about the play do not detract from the merits of the production. The acting, crowned by Hume Cronyn's compelling performance, is excellent. The other characters, however, are left with usually sketchy parts. Margaret Braidwood as Mrs. Crowe and Paul Harding as the Bishop of Caerleon were splendid, though Donald Ewer as Mr. Crowe's accomplice in blackmail burlesqued the role of Jeremiah Sant with a thick Irish accent. Liza Cole, Julie Andrews' mother in Hawaii, played the warm-hearted Agnes with unabashed charm. Her reward after the wildly sentimental scene with Hadrian in the Papal chambers...
...special word of praise should go to Robert Fletcher for the costumes and settings, especially of the Papal scenes. The elaborate robes worn by the Cardinals and the uniforms of the guards were dazzling. Hume Cronyn, short and slender, was like a jaunty version of Pius XII when decked out in his garb as Pope...
...such stories Borges is playing with philosophy-Schopenhauer's concepts from The World as Will and Idea, Bishop Berkeley's assertion that existence is dependent upon individual perception; Hume's denial of the existence of absolute space. For Borges' admirers, the delicious point is simply that he takes reality with a grain of salt. Great events, vast trends, the pompous certainties implied by the French phrase grands mots -all these are not for Borges. History, that troubling angular presence that the middle-aged invoke to prove to the young that nothing ever really changes...