Word: idealists
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...Dudley House production is full of good actors; unfortunately, the role of Alceste is miscast and the weak lead seriously disables this Misanthrope. The show lacks pacing and modulations of tone. Alceste's non-stop bombast ruins Moliere's clever commentary on the futility of one sincere idealist's battle against a self-deceiving world. The Misanthrope is a drawing-room comedy, and this version still needs a little work back at the drawing board...
...though its tone is more appropriate to a sentimental comedy. The disparity may arise because Director Marco Vicario (Homo Eroticus) can't quite manage the French trick of finding cuckoldry hilarious. The situation, at any rate, is satisfactorily ridiculous. Luigi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a wealthy wine merchant, an idealist and a writer of tracts on the equality of women. He is also a great philanderer, with mistresses and bastard children all around Italy. But what has that to do with idealism...
That makes the land buyers a curious blend of investor-cum-idealist. R-Ranch's founder is Jeff Dennis, 55, a rancher and hunter who tells of bunking with fellow Marine Ted Williams when both men were flying F9 Panther jets over Korea. Says he: "I'm not an out-and-out environmentalist, but I believe in keeping as much land intact as we can." He paid about $5 million for five adjoining cattle ranches that totaled 5,119 acres, then in 1971 established his park with amenities that include more than 850 campsites and a large bunkhouse...
...revival at Manhattan's Circle in the Square theater is not exactly on the rocks, but it is certainly becalmed. One obvious flaw is the casting. Shaw's hero, Jack Tanner (George Grizzard), who doubles as Don Juan, is meant to be a clever and intense young idealist, full of revolutionary ardor. He is in the grip of what Shaw calls a "master passion," and his iconoclastic views are contrasted with those of a fossilized former liberal, Roebuck Ramsden (Richard Woods). Grizzard works hard. But he is visibly too old for the part and lacks the psychic energy...
...first time since Lincoln, confronted the nation with the "moral outrage" of the position of the black in society. He was a pragmatist who competed fiercely with the Soviets in the armaments race that he might parley with them from a position of strength. He was an idealist who sent the Peace Corps into Third World areas where Americans had never been before...