Word: mab
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Mercutio did Shakespeare give the celebrated Queen Mab speech, one of the great virtuoso arias in the language. Smithers delivers this faery monologue in a slow, sloppy, slovenly manner, with no heed to what he is saying, when the speech should be, in Mercutio's own words, "as thin of substance...
Both Smithers and Landau should be made to listen to the Queen Mab vocal scherzetto and orchestral scherzo from Berlioz' "dramatic symphony" Romeo and Juliet before Smithers sets foot on the Festival stage again. In fact, no director should essay this play until he has studied all of the Berlioz masterpiece, the only work based on Shakespeare's play that surpasses the original. Significantly, in his Sunday appraisal of this production, the New York Times' Brooks Atkinson was also moved to invoke the Berlioz work. Although he made some inaccurate statements about both Berlioz and his symphony, his basic point...
...voice or roll of theatrical thunder, but from a projection of feeling, a rush of psychological light. Moving from Youth through Manhood to Old Age, he plays many parts. Few will complain that he includes a host of warhorses-Hamlet's best soliloquies, Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, an abdicating Richard II, a sleepless Henry IV, a dying Lear and John of Gaunt. A few may wonder why Gielgud includes numerous sonnets and not a single lyric, only to decide that he prefers his Shakespeare, even when most poetic, in a personalized context...
...medium, though in a few places he smothered the low register of the flute. The Lento was the most appealing movement, with its recurring effective series of chord clusters on the harpsichord and its busy, feathery middle section, which seemed to be Carter's idea of a modern Queen Mab scherzo...
...quite an odd sound to ears tuned to 1952's prosperity. In last week's TV version of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted, there was no longer any mention of the fact that one of the leading characters was a confirmed Wobbly. Says Mab Anderson: "People today don't even know what Wobblies...