Word: matilda
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pirandello's Henry IV tells of a modern-day nobleman (David Skeist '02) who has, for the last 20 years, believed himself to be Emperor Henry IV of Germany. As the play opens, his one-time paramour Matilda (Karin Alexander '02) comes to visit "Henry" in his grotesquely medieval living-space. She brings her friend Baron Belcredi (Tom Price '02), her daughter Frida (Marianne Cook '02) and a psychiatrist (Matthew Carlson) who intends to study "Henry" and attempt to cure him. Matilda and Belcredi explain the scenario to the doctor and to us before entering Henry's masquerade along with...
...Though her role involves fewer histrionics, Karin Alexander makes something equally special of Matilda. Her quiet strength and biting tongue make her irresistible, and we can easily believe that she is a woman Henry still obsesses over after 20 years...
...other leading roles are quite capably filled. Carlson plays the supercilious psychiatrist excellently; his haughty posture is such that he manages to look down his nose even at the towering Skeist. Price is similarly condescending as Baron Belcredi, weathering Matilda's insults and ruthlessly mocking Frida while always maintaining his panache. Cook brings great zest to the role of the attention-seeking Frida, and David Freeman '02 gives her fianc, the Marquis, an appropriately petulant reading. The four attendants are alternately hilarious and touching; Rakhe and Haynie are deliciously over-the-top throughout Act I, and both Asnes and Goulet...
...high school I'll call Leonard, who was said to know 58 terms for the female breast. He used the terms constantly, and unexpectedly. A few of us would be talking about our Latin teacher's severity, and Leonard would suddenly pipe up with, "That Matilda's got a set of Howards on her, all right...
...know why. When Christoph sailed for America, he changed his last name back to Jardin and, with Emma, raised a new family that would include my grandmother, Matilda Jardin Blackman. A pious, churchgoing Mason by the time he reached his 40s, Christoph never told my father's family that he had left a child in Hawaii--or that Alexander was, in fact, his flesh and blood...