Word: mccowen
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...changes since the Broadway run, none of which affect the extraordinary quality of the production. Brian Murray, the original Rosencrantz, now has his characterization perfect. Laughing at the winds as he struggles along trying to penetrate the morass in which he finds himself, Murray makes his portrayal rival Alec McCowen's Hadrian in its timing and intensity. In addition, the Derek Goldby staging remains as graceful and moving as a year ago, and the Richard Pilbrow lighting plot still strikes me as the best I've ever seen...
...Seventh. Playwright Peter Luke makes Rolfe the hero of his own story; he is an eccentric misfit who, after being rejected twice for the priesthood, develops the fantasy that he becomes Pope. In a stunning performance that is a paradigm of the elegant best in English acting style, Alec McCowen manages to evoke for Rolfe a sense of pity and affection...
Pope in history. With an outstanding command of technique and a wealth of small mannerisms under perfect control, Alec McCowen displays Rolfe's narcissism and cunning, his insincerity, vulnerability and genuine religious obsession. His performance may well be one of the major theatrical events of the decade...
...Rolfe playing Pope, McCowen basks deliciously in all the power and glory: swishing his stunning robes with epicene pleasure, outwitting a cluster of conniving cardinals or charming his opponents into loyalty and love, reforming the Church singlehanded in a series of staggering coups, then meeting his martyrdom, complete with saintly forgiveness of the murderer. McCowen does all this with a command of technique that is outstanding. His ability to project emotional confusion - notably in two dramatic confession scenes -while maintaining crystalline intelligibility, is a paradigm of the elegant best in English acting style. Beyond that, he manages to evoke...
Caught in a Dog Collar. "Perhaps I play him more sympathetically than he is," says McCowen. "I love the man very much." This kind of commitment to a character, McCowen feels, is the specialty of American acting, by which he considers himself strongly influenced. "American actors," he says, "may be sometimes lacking in technique, but they are never superficial. I think American theater has been a good influence on the English-more than they will admit. I found from the Americans that there was a great deal more to my job than I had realized...