Word: maddened
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...when the King returns to England that the director and Madden have gone astray. I said above that the role admits of great latitude in performance. One thing, though, is sure: Richard suffers, but he always revels in his suffering. He is a masochist. He feels, he intentionally embroiders on his feelings, and he can at the same time even objectively observe himself from outside. He is always conscious of his audience--even when the audience is just himself. He undergoes emotions, but can control and channel them as he sees fit. Shakespeare has made Richard the purveyor of artificial...
...Kahn and Madden have agreed to minimize or obliterate the control, the masochism, the supermusicality. Instead Madden plays it "straight," purely on the experiential level; what he feels he voices without modification. This approach is indicated most clearly by the fact that, at moments of tension and anxiety, Richard's speech is afflicted by a slight stammering over sibilants and gutturals. There are even traces of the Maurice Evans tremolo, and at one point Madden pushes his voice to a gargly fortissimo. Later he even seems to suffer a chest spasm or an asthma attack...
...play (and was censored for political reasons until 1608), ought to be the supreme example of Richard's artistic management, the culmiation of a life-long series of shows. It is he who arranged it, he who has staged it, and he who stars in it. But Madden, now garbed in gray, tells Bolingbroke, "Here, cousin, seize the crown," and beckons with a finger. On yielding up the crown and sceptre, Richard's hands tremble and his voice stutters. In short, Richard the Actor has failed; and this is unacceptable. Still, Madden does strike straight to the heart...
...death scene in an almost totally dark dungeon, Madden's Richard does manage to contrive a controlled theatrical exit by assuming a Cruci-fixion posture against the bars of his confines as he breathes his last...
Make no mistake: Madden's performance is engrossing throughout, wrongheaded though it is at times. Still, the evidence is clear that he has the technique to do just about anything he's told to do. Shakespeare needed Richard as preparation for Hamlet; reversing the process, Madden brought to Richard the experience of having rather impressively played Hamlet at the Phoenix Theatre in New York in 1961. The blame for his current shortcomings must be laid almost entirely to the director, who has, I may say, done most of the rest of his work here quite laudably...