Word: mckenna
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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...
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...
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...