Word: iv
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pirandello's Emperor Henry IV, now at the Schubert Theater with Rex Harrison in the starring role, is perhaps not as deep as it would like to be. Neither Harrison's intense acting nor the majestic stage set can lift the dialogue from the realm of the obvious (or the too ambiguous, which sometimes comes to the same thing). The play works best when it attempts to be comic; when the hero lets loose with one of his philosophical outbursts, the audience tends to shuffle its feet. But there is little time to get bored with such a short production...
...unravel. Basically, the main character is not really the medieval German emperor, (sigh of relief from those who hate historical plays), but a twentieth-century Italian aristocrat who suffered a fall from his horse during a mock-medieval pageant and remained convinced that he was actually Henry IV. In order to humor him, his relatives have totally recreated Henry's courts, with servants in medieval dress, oil lamps instead of electric lights, visiting abbots and monks--the works. For twenty years "Henry" orders everybody around, demanding obedience to his every whim. With madness like this, who needs sanity...
...fool Henry while he acts a part to fool them; we also get filled to the gills with more mirror imagery than can decently fit into a single play. The throne room is decorated with two life-sized portraits which are supposed to represent mirror images of Henry IV and Matilde of Tuscany, the woman he loves, and their presence stimulates a predictable discussion about the reality of reflections. Much is made of the fact that the Countess Matilde's daughter is the perfect image of her mother as a young woman. To top it off, Henry goes around looking...
...WHAT SAVES this production? Its comedy, for one thing. Although the play has tragic elements--in a surprise ending, for example, Henry IV stabs his former rival--the comic aspects come through most clearly, and the final impression is certainly not one of sadness. Much of the humor is contained in one-line comments, as when Henry asks Matilde to let the "bowels of compassion" within her be moved by his plea (I wonder how that went in the original Italian), or when he criticizes his servants for revealing the secret of his sanity: "You jeopardized your own position. After...
...Ingres' Odalisque en Grisaille a monogram enclosed in a circle, which Ingres' student Armand Cambon used to sign his works. X rays made by Hubert von Sonnenburg, the museum's restorer, revealed that there was no underpainting or preliminary sketches in the Velasquez portrait of Philip IV, so Met experts concluded it was probably a copy, since most great artists sketch in some tentative ideas before they produce the completed work...