Word: lear
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Notable offerings include: OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL (Ashland): Merchant of Venice, Lear, Twelfth Night and Henry VI, Part...
PILGRIMAGE THEATER (Hollywood Hills): John Houseman's U.C.L.A. production of Lear, starring Morris Carnovsky...
Close on Seltzer's acting heels is Mark Bramhall, Edmund the bastard son of Gloucester. Bramhall dominates the big Loeb stage and plays a cunning, cold-hearted bastard with wonderful confidence and relish. Standing near Bramhall are Lear's fool, Harry Smith, who seems too bitter, too sharp at first, but who persuades us finally; the Earl of Kent, Yann Weymouth, who acts with welcome restraint amid the general ranting; and Edgar, Richard Backus, who makes a fine fool and a noble Edgar. John Ross as Albany and Thomas Weisbuch as Cornwall both perform well, but they are in demanding...
...women are not so satisfactory. Deborah Fortson is lovely as Cordelia and moves well in the part, but she does not always speak to full effectiveness. Cordelia, at any rate, the vessel of all love and virtue, may be a more difficult role than Lear. Her sisters Goneril and Regan, Madelon Hambro and Emily Levine, are excellent bitches but bad actresses. They read lines in a shrewish monotone which neither entertains nor shocks, and they fail to distinguish between themselves so that their characters, except for different dresses, might be identical. Regan should be the softer, nicer...
Hamlin's direction, then, exploits most of the resources of the play. What is good is very, very good; what is bad is hardly worth mentioning. The world of Lear, moved by the spare, shaved verse of Shakespeare's maturest style, comes to life for most of an evening before leaving on the white robes of Lear's old sacrifices and new death. If at times the drama seems too difficult or the production too loud, we should remember that the best part of the play goes on in our minds, and, I suppose, our hearts...