Word: maudlinity
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...thus reducing Desdemona to a walk-on? Director Franco Zeffirelli never quite answers that question. The flamboyant Italian's 1983 cinematic version of La Traviata widened the opera's scope with tender reminiscences only implied in the libretto. In Otello, however, flashbacks to the Moor's slave childhood are maudlin, and Zeffirelli's camera, jumping edgily from storm to massed choruses to brawls and bedrooms, tires the mind. As Otello, Tenor Placido Domingo is in robust voice, and Bass Justino Diaz makes a splendidly vile Iago. Yet Zeffirelli's presumption in heavily editing Verdi's taut masterpiece serves neither movie...
Admittedly, the play does intermittently descend into a maudlin sort of melancholia, aggravated by its overtly economic swipes on upperclass values. It isn't enough, for instance, for Jean to tell Julie that "love is a game we [the servants] play when we get time off front work;" he has to reiterate it to Kristine to the audience, and to himself. These, however, are faults of the playwright, not the cast, and encumbrances which the actors manage to handle well. Norris is particularly careful to keep his monologues from turning into didactic speeches, so that the characters dominate the themes...
Unfortunately, that parallelism doesn't extend much farther; the dissatisfying, sometimes maudlin poetry and overt melodrama of Calderon's play - bears little resemblance to the bard's more skillful lines. Yet despite the flaws in the play, this Agassiz production does an admirable job in bringing Calderon's 350-year old imagery to vibrant life...
Whether bringing Lenny Skutnik, the Air Florida crash hero, to his State of the Union address at the Capitol or making time for a photo session with Retton and the other Olympic medalists, Reagan manages to come off like a kindly Uncle Sam. Even when his rhetoric turns maudlin and manipulative, he seems sincere, for the President believes the patriotic pieties simply and intensely. He gives himself goose bumps. In a speech at the American Legion convention two weeks ago, Reagan went right to the heart of the matter. "What a change from only a few years ago, when patriotism...
...performance itself is equally lukewarm. Rogers' portrait of the foster son Don is convincing, and Bob Knapp gives a highly amusing, if at times overdone, performance of Marion's boyfriend, Zappy. On the whole, however, most of the actors lack the energy the play calls for and resort to maudlin, melodramatic performances...