Word: mccowen
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Only in the somber final chapters, through Gethsemane and the Crucifixion, does McCowen abandon these shadings for an almost severely straightforward manner. With a sure instinct, he realizes that here a minimum of effects will achieve the greatest effect...
...operative word for McCowen is tell. He tells Mark's story, he does not intone it. He clears away the ponderousness and singsong preachiness of centuries of Bible reading to rediscover the urgent, living voice of a man who is recounting nearly contemporary events, many of them derived from eyewitness accounts...
...McCowen sketches in these characterizations with a few gestures-flinging up his arms, walking a few steps, sitting, taking a well-judged pause for a sip of water. But mostly this is acting, as the saying goes, from the neck up. It rests on vocal virtuosity, powerfully abetted by the matchless pith and vigor of the King James version...
...McCowen's narrative throbs with excitement or drops to an astonished whisper during his recounting of the miracles. He stifles a yelp of laughter at supplicants removing the roof of a house to get at Jesus (one of several surprisingly humorous moments). He rises to a tipsy bellow as Herod offers Salome a reward for her dancing, then sheers off into girlish silliness when Salome, as if for want of anything better, asks for the head of John the Baptist...
Fine actors, like fine singers, can be divided into recital artists and operatic rafter ringers. McCowen, 53, with his refined emotional pitch, his dryly witty intelligence and his meticulous craft, is one of the recitalists. He has had showpiece roles-notably the title role in Hadrian VII and the psychiatrist in the original London production of Equus-but even these called more for finesse than fire...