Word: mckenna
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...that the living-room screen can be an embarrassing setting for characters who speak stilted blank verse (with Hamlet echoes) and live amid the topical excitement of another decade. Playhouse go (CBS) chose to grapple with second-rate Shaw, and even an excellent cast-Robert Morley, Claire Bloom, Siobhan McKenna-could not cram the rapid-fire sex and social relations of Misalliance into a really meaningful hour and a half...
Playhouse 90 (CBS, 9:30-11 p.m.). G. B. Shaw's class-conscious comedy, Mix-alliance, with a classy cast: Claire Bloom, Siobhan McKenna, Rod Taylor and Robert Morley...
Retaining Miss McKenna as a star, the C.D.F. next offered Macbeth. For the title role, it played a long shot by engaging Jason Robards, Jr. and lost. Although Robards' performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable, he proved himself as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. He conveyed much through his face and eyes; and his delivery of some short, forceful phrases was admirable. But the longer speeches tripped him up; he could not convey the sense, the rhythm, and the grandeur. He breathed improperly, so that he often had to pause...
...Miss McKenna's Lady Macbeth was a remarkable and consistent performance. She made it clear that she did not covet the crown just for her own sake but wanted her husband to be king at any cost because she was so much in love with him. Her tricky deportment at the banquet and her exit therefrom were wonderfully handled...
...traversal of the sleepwalking scene proved to be highly controversial. Miss McKenna injected a lot of agitation into it and pitched it high--an approach that drew the fire of some of the critics in the daily press. These evidently conceive of somnambulism as always graceful, and of somniloquy as exclusively a lyrical, if not whispered nocturne. This is, to be sure, the customary way of doing the scene; but Miss McKenna's way was valid and convincing, too. Her critics should have remembered that one can do violent things in one's sleep; and that Lady Macbeth's mind...