Word: malvolio
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...plot's unique balance of flexibility and limitation that catches the directorial imagination. Mixups in identity, women disguised as men, love triangles, and rowdy servants can be portrayed any number of ways, but identical twins have to look alike, and whether the characters dress in down jackets or loincloths, Malvolio must somehow appear in yellow stockings...
...details need to be tampered with. All the modernizations are properly minimal, though an anachronism or two grates on the nerves--nobody holds bear-baitings in a Hollywood garden. The romantic setting proves its appropriateness most triumphantly in the discovery of a way to get away with Malvolio's yellow stockings (an imaginative coup too tunny to reveal...
...GENERAL EASE pays off by letting every character expand from comic stereotype to reality, exploiting, to the full the scope and potential of Samuels's approach--not to mention the richness of the play itself. An unfunny Malvolio is inconceivable, but the part can easily become unbelievable or grotesque. Christopher Randolph, without sacrificing any comic content, somehow makes his Malvolio heartwrenching as well...
...press opening, Kenneth Haigh's Prospero seemed imbued with a weariness that I don't think either he or the director intended. Haigh's load this summer is enough to tire anyone: when he is not doing Prospero, he is playing either Brutus (an even longer role) or Malvolio. At any rate, his Prospero is not yet a sustained piece of work...
...most striking change--and welcome it is--comes with the spoilsport steward Malvolio. Bob Dishy's portrayal last summer was by far the worst Malvolio I have ever seen, professional or amateur. This time we have Kenneth Haigh, who knows what he's doing. He can wither with a glance, and inflate his importance with a long swagger-stick. And he is wise enough not to protract the Letter Scene beyond endurance. Fine as Haigh is though he has not found as many nucances in the character as Philip Kerr did on this came stage...