Word: mimes
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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James Ruff's energetic portrayal of Lindoro, the heroine's lover, saves was an otherwise anemic role. Of all the leads, ruffs arias are the most consistent, his crescendos gradual and never punched. Aside from needless in his opening aria, Ruff displayed Sunday night a mastery of facial mime and stage presence. His improvisation takes full advantage of the humorous license that Rossini gives his characters...
Paul Lincoln, as Isabella's lonely and luckless suitor Taddeo, conveys the essence of hid conceited character perfectly. Although his voice was not spectacular (he was rumored to have been ill on Sunday), his excellent positioning, mime and gesturing complemented the humour show of Stevens and Ames. In the finale, Lincoln finishes the opera with a show of vocal stamina indicative of ali of the leads...
Lars Mellander (Ali), Dorothy Morris (Elvira), and Janine Wanee (Zulma) turn in performance of technical aplomb but little else. Mellander's inexpressive mime doesn't go beyond the essentials. Morris's Elvira is appropriately pitiful, but comes across more contentious than helpless, more an evil shrew than a hapless victim of a inane husband's scorn. And Wanee's Zulma, although not a major part, fades too easily into inconsequence...
...things that shaped the immortal mime -- his Victorian sentimentality (of which his passion for underage girls was the most obvious, least agreeable part), his pretense to intellectuality, the torments of his vast celebrity -- are only vaguely alluded to. These are tough topics, wrong for the form (and indulgent attitude) Attenborough has chosen. Robert Downey Jr., who plays Chaplin, might have been up to them, but this episodic film gives him only cautious scenes, not an incautious character, to play...
This production achieves accessibility through O'Neill's striking combination of talents. Not only is he a dynamic speaker, but he is also a powerfully expressive mime, trained by Marcel Marceau. And for the virtually impenetrable Finnegan's Wake, mime is the audience's salvation from a potentially tedious recitation of word-play in 37 languages. Director Catherine Fitzgerald has skillfully balanced the priority due to the written word with physical enactments that provide crucial footnotes to the text...