Word: lear
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...MacKenzie (Mia Farrow), was at 18 facing Life: Schuster, she learned, was interested in her for more than her baby-sitting services. "Basically Moral." But Monash sees "nothing offensive" in such plotting. "Why don't our critics," he asks, "count up what happens in the three hours King Lear is on the stage?" Not that ABC is really counting (except its audiences). Its prime defense, enunciated repeatedly by Programming Director Adrian Samish, is that "the show is basically very clean and moral, because wrongdoers are punished." For instance, when the richest boy in town gets the daughter...
...Carnovsky has certainly deepened his Lear, not only conceptually but also through lovely nuances of acting and timing and some strangely effective gestures and line-readings--such as his tapping of his crazed skull when he asks poor Tom o' Bedlam (who by now has become his "philosopher"), "What is the cause of thunder?" (Act III, Scene 4), thereby linking quite appropriately the storm on the heath and the storm in his tormented mind...
...wits by anger and frustration does not go loony; he goes mad! As it is, the character fails to grow, fails to come to grips with his own follies and errors, and--worst of all--fails to learn humility, which is what makes one willing to believe that Lear is truly "a man more sinn'd against than sinning" (a line, by the way, that Mr. Carnovsky feels obliged to repeat...
This failure is most blatantly apparent when he asks to stay out in the storm to pray before withdrawing to the hovel, and then remains standing through the prayer--which is one of the most self-revealing and humble speeches Lear has. Mr. Carnovsky's standing somehow kills the humility and adds a touch of defiance, which is compounded by his choosing to kneel once the prayer is over...
...Carnovsky has the elements of a truly great Lear--in his intellect, in his instrument, and in his artistry. But in his first production I felt his mad scenes were not mad at all; now they are merely loony. And by choosing to play the madness for so many of its comic values, he has to his own detriment prevented the possibility of his Lear's rising to tragic or classic proportions...