Word: lear
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...musicals. There is dazzling elegance in Theoni V. Aldredge's costumes, and a young belter named Jennifer Holliday can start, stop and steal a show. (See above.) The Dresser. Paul Rogers plays a decrepit provincial Shakespearean actor-manager; Tom Courtenay, his valet. In double image, they are Lear and his Fool-and both are magnificent...
...priority on assuring that her clients will be satisfied with the way they are portrayed. One key is finding a reputable producer. Golden persuaded Client Sonia Johnson, who was expelled from the Mormon Church in 1979 because of her outspoken support of the Equal Rights Amendment, to pick Norman Lear, an ardent ERA backer. Says Golden: "It wouldn't have mattered if he had offered only one half the money that anyone else...
Meantime, Michael Grade is leaving to "go to work for Lear." This does not mean that he is auditioning for the Royal Shakespeare Company, however, only that he is becoming president of Norman Lear's TV production company in California. This will put him an ocean away from Sweet Fanny, but within hailing distance of Burbank, allowing him to watch the Tonight show five times a week...
...wisest character in King Lear is the Fool, an observation few statesmen notice until the work of comic artists brings them down. In Masters of Caricature (Knopf; 240 pages; $25) the productions of savage and subtle comedians from William Hogarth to David Levine pass in review. Ministers of the 19th century wither under Daumier's derision; Thomas Nast sweeps out Tammany Hall; George Grosz annihilates Germany between the wars. But Historian and Art Critic William Feaver's text also makes room for such sly performers as Sir John Tenniel, who created a Wonderland for Alice, and Sir Leslie...
Apart from its affectionate snapshots of theatrical mechanics, backstage bitchiness, superstitious rituals and votive dedication, The Dresser's compounded impact comes from its being a Lear within a Lear. Norman is Shakespeare's Fool as much as he is Sir's. The storm-ravaged heath is Britain under the lightning bolts of the Luftwaffe, and Sir's stunted wartime company resembles the decimated retinue of soldiery left to Lear's command. In his foray into town, shivering, soaked, his mind cast adrift from its moorings, Sir could be Lear's naked "unaccommodated man" shorn...