Word: macbeth
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...Brattle Theatre has come heartbreakingly close to putting out a truly great production of "Macbeth." They have missed it not through any deficiency in acting--Ruth Ford and William Devlin are probably the finest actors ever seen on the Brattle stage--but through some unperceptive directing which has taken fantastic liberties with Shakespeare...
...weird an interpretation of the Weird Sisters as has ever been devised. The witches go through enough earthy comedy to preclude them from being "Fates," while they appear so often in such strange places as to make it impossible to believe that they are the mere psychological manifestations of Macbeth's character. They cavort with the drunken porter, dive into secret trap-doors in the stage, finish the play with an incantation which was never written by Shakespeare (or if it was, is ordinarily wisely omitted), and generally make such a nuisance of themselves as to confuse the main character...
These vagaries are more irritating since they detract from what is essentially an inspiring production. Ruth Ford's Lady Macbeth is superb. She is not the Amazonian Lady Macbeth of brute strength and indomitable will; her strength seems to be drawn from an immense source of nervous energy. This, joined with her sensitivity and fragile beauty, makes it seem impossible that she should last as long as she does under the same strain of guilt which overcomes Macbeth. The sleep-walking scene, when the sham is gone and there is nothing left but the subconscious, is the finest moment...
Studio One (Mon. 10 p.m., CBS). Macbeth, with Charlton Heston, Judith Evelyn...
...Venice, met Composer Gian Francesco Malipiero and Conductor Angelo Ephrikian. In Florence, while sampling the music at hand, she insists that in a nightclub she discovered the "last resting place of bop." At opening night of the Maggio Musicale she saw her first performance of Verdi's Macbeth, was a bit disappointed in the production but not at all in the music. Before she went off to Switzerland, she caught a dress rehearsal and the premiere of Ildebrando Pizzetti's new opera Iphegenia...