Word: malvolio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...chief shortcoming of the production is the atrocious Malvolio perpetrated by Bob Dishy. This is a particular disappointment after the fine Malvolios that Josef Sommer and Philip Kerr acted on the same stage in 1966 and 1974. And the role of this egotistical killjoy is so important that in the 17th century the play was sometimes billed as Malvolio...
...invention), the cheerless square peg in a round hole, reflects the Elizabethan era's fascination with neurotic states of mind (as in the plays of Ben Jonson), which would climax a few years later in the publication of Burton's huge Anatomy of Melancholy. Jaques is the counterpart of Malvolio in Twelfth Night, which Philip Kerr played so admirably here two years ago. Kerr is now imbuing Jaques with the same wide-stanced, pigeon-toed gait he used for Malvolio. To this he has added a wonderful pasty face and a hilarious mannerism of gargling his r's in words...
Kerr now adds Leontes to the list of remarkable portrayals he has limned in earlier AST seasons--including Brutus, Octavius (in both Caesar and Antony), Malcolm, Malvolio, and Angelo. In the 13 years since his graduation from Harvard, Kerr has long since developed into one of the sterling Shakespearen actors of our time...
...lasting grip on playgoers' memories and critics' yardsticks. His successors must always suffer the ordeal of comparison. Even long-dead actors exert their possessive prerogatives. Praise a present Hamlet and some oldtimer will tell you that "Barrymore was the greatest." In Twelfth Night, Brian Bedford retkes the Malvolio...
...Malvolio is the primmest of puritans. He preens before the mirror of his self-approbation. "Holier than thou" drips from every syllable he speaks. He is thus terribly gullible when a trumped-up letter purports to disclose that the lady Olivia, whom he serves as a kind of steward, is desperately in love with him. Bedford purses his lips as if his mouth were pickled in brine. He walks with the gravity of a frozen penguin. His mien alternates between a mask of hauteur and a tickled-pink grin of uncontainable self-adulation. As an actor, he takes the treacherous...