Word: mckenna
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Even those who decried Berghof's liberties had to admit that the resulting show was exuberantly entertaining and contained several brilliantly staged elaborations. Siobhan McKenna's Viola was a gem. As the play's one honest, sincere, and normal person, who must spend most of the time abnormally disguised as a young boy, Miss McKenna conveyed a zestful boyishness without ever losing her innate womanliness; and she paid more attention than anyone else to the poetic qualities of the text...
Just before she went onstage as Lady Macbeth at Boston's brand-new, nylon-roofed arena theater last week, Irish Actress Siobhan McKenna sent a note to her costar, Jason Robards Jr. "Dear Macbeth," she wrote. "It's funny that after all these years I haven't got to know your first name. I want you to know that yours is the most moving and truly poetic Macbeth I have ever known." When the play was finished, apart from critics who claimed to miss polish and high oratorical style, the cheering audience was willing to go Siobhan...
...convincing as the man of honor changing slowly into an unwilling miscreant and finally into a ruthless, sneering, hell-bent King. Outstanding moments: his bloody babbling after Macbeth murders Duncan ("Macbeth does murder sleep"), the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" speech as he holds his dead wife in his arms. Actress McKenna made her Lady Macbeth warm and feminine ("I feel people should have compassion for the sinners of the world"). In the sleepwalking scene, her red hair streaming above a white, wispy gown and her hands scrubbing themselves in ghastly compulsion, Actress McKenna put on the greatest mad scene seen...
...years that Miss McKenna has been seen in this country, she has done a superlative job in two recent plays, Enid Bagnold's The Chalk Garden and Morton Wishengrad's The Rope Dancers. But she has also recreated an impressive number of classic roles. She has given us a warm Sister Juana and a wonderful Maggie Wylie; and an unmatchably transcendent Saint Joan, which may serve as a yardstick for all future performances by an actress. In Shakespeare, she has now offered us a memorable Hamlet (yes, the title role!), Viola, and Lady Macbeth. And I have not cited...
...hail, Siobhan McKenna! hail to thee, World's First Lady of the Theatre...