Word: mckean
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...always gratifying to witness a performer improve his role, and this production affords that gratification in triplicate to staunch Harvard Dilbert and Sullivan patrons. John McKean seems to have found, in Ralph Rackstraw, the Gilbertian lead to which he is best suited. The part calls for rapid changes of character: from a caricature of soulfulness to impetuosity to prideful rage to rapture to despair to pompous authority and back, finally, to rapture. That McKean can make so many transitions so rapidly is itself a feat worthy of praise; that he makes them so smoothly and so convincingly is simply amazing...
...nothing with the part of Robin Oakapple, the would-be do-gooder in that lingering line of n'er-do-wells, the Baronets of Ruddigore. Where he should be ridiculously eager, he is listless; where he should be bottomlessly downcast, he is listless. On the other hand, John B. McKean, who plays Oakapple's foster brother, is ceaselessly, aimlessly and rather awkwardly energetic. He is always swirling, prancing and dance-stepping. His good intentions and obvious relish for the part can neither overcome nor excuse the peculiar dialect in which his lines are delivered. There is no saying for sure...
...Michael Mckean provided a wooden and unconvincing Troilus, at least on opening night, and his youthful monotone, obviously deliberate in many places, grew way out of proportion in scenes when some acting would have been appropriate. Lisa Kelley fared a little better as Cressida, probably because the script requires one hell of a character change whether the actress likes it or not, but she spent most of her time struggling with difficult verse and a very strange costume reminiscent of early Ku Klux Klan...
Performances employed more acting mannerisms than acting, and even Daniel Seltzer as Georges used more vocal and physical tricks than this excellent and accomplished actor has ever displayed. Susan Lyke plays Irma at a fever pitch, unmodulated and quickly uninteresting, as was Janet Bowes as a listless Carmen. Michael McKean did the Envoy with excellent comic precision, although by playing it gay he threw the production over the edge, as far as this reviewer was concerned. Only Lisa Kelley successfully conveyed something of the balances and conflicts in Genet's many strange worlds. But as Chantal the revolutionary she comes...
...passed the McKean Gate and the Voice told us to look inside and catch a glimpse of John Harvard's statue. "Until last year the statue was in Harvard Square. But every day the statue was painted a different color. So quite recently the authorities moved it into the Harvard Yard." The Sunglassed Voice seemed to be having a lot of trouble with his chronology. "I'm told you can buy anything you want in Harvard Square. Anything at all, Pot, anything. Notice the car registrations. They're from all over the world, and I do mean all over...