Word: malvolio
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...leading Shakespearean actor of this time, Maurice Evans, plays the pompous Malvolio with his usual moist, resonant subtlety of speech. He also adopts a Cockney accent that undoubtedly makes the labored humor of the part more amusing than it really is. Into the pronunciation of the single word '"Run?" he manages to crowd an enormous amount of haughty comedy...
...judging by Monday night's sprinkled and hesitant laughter. In fact, the whole attitude of the audience today seems far too polite for a playwright used to the bantering of the "pit." The Elizabethan wits must have lambasted Malvolio as enthusiastically as the later 19th Century hissed the villain. His first appearance bedecked with yellow garters probably unloosed a storm of mirth and ridicule. A little more of this boisterousness would be a welcome addition...
...joke to spoil it, but it would hardly rate in the poorest radio laugh-show. It belongs to a comic old knight, still able to raise cain, but really as antiquated and useless as the England which is giving way to new commerce and "new men" like the ambitious Malvolio. And rather than the "robust comedy" which Miss Hughes wants, the mellowness and restraint of Norman Lloyd and Mark Smith seemed to me a perfect interpretation...
...stars, is the choice of the play, which admirers of Mr. Evans' more oratorical hours may consider beneath him. But "Twelfth Night" has a breadth not often demonstrated in such a clear light. Into each circle of society-from the clowning Maria and Toby Belch; to the peacock Malvolio, as much a clown on a higher plane; to Orsino, Viola and Olivia, made fools of by love in their own right-Shakespeare has pried good humoredly. But when the smoke of his amazingly complicated plot has cleared, it is nothing but "a whirligig of time." You are left singing...
...last detail of posture and strut, Miss Hayes would have pleased even Shakespeare. Perhaps he might have thought her occasionally too gentle for some rougher moments, but then the audience, too, refused to roar in the old Elizabethan abandon at some of his slickest puns and sexy jokes. Malvolio, the perfect fop from curtain to curtain, is a much narrower part than Viola's. But every opportunity for satire, characterization and even, in spots, sincere drama, is exploited by Maurice Evans so completely that we are fortunate the part is in the hands of the "master...