Word: macbeth
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...Macbeth...
Retaining Miss McKenna as a star, the C.D.F. next offered Macbeth. For the title role, it played a long shot by engaging Jason Robards, Jr. and lost. Although Robards' performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable, he proved himself as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. He conveyed much through his face and eyes; and his delivery of some short, forceful phrases was admirable. But the longer speeches tripped him up; he could not convey the sense, the rhythm, and the grandeur. He breathed improperly, so that he often had to pause...
Just before she went onstage as Lady Macbeth at Boston's brand-new, nylon-roofed arena theater last week, Irish Actress Siobhan McKenna sent a note to her costar, Jason Robards Jr. "Dear Macbeth," she wrote. "It's funny that after all these years I haven't got to know your first name. I want you to know that yours is the most moving and truly poetic Macbeth I have ever known." When the play was finished, apart from critics who claimed to miss polish and high oratorical style, the cheering audience was willing to go Siobhan...
...horses' hoofs, bells, and. in the sudden striking silences, the rasp of crickets. Armies fought across the front of the vast Elizabethan stage with such intensity that those in front-row seats pulled back in alarm. Offstage entrances brought the action into the far reaches of the theater; Macbeth strode out to meet the three weird, raffia-haired witches from the very back edge of the theater; Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane down every aisle...
...uncertain acoustics in the new house, hurt the performances. But Actor Robards, with his long, brooding spade-jawed scowl, was almost always convincing as the man of honor changing slowly into an unwilling miscreant and finally into a ruthless, sneering, hell-bent King. Outstanding moments: his bloody babbling after Macbeth murders Duncan ("Macbeth does murder sleep"), the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech as he holds his dead wife in his arms. Actress McKenna made her Lady Macbeth warm and feminine ("I feel people should have compassion for the sinners of the world"). In the sleepwalking scene, her red hair streaming above...