Word: miscasting
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...hopes one day to do a show with Mike Nichols; he wanted her for the Broadway lead in The Apple Tree, but signed Barbara Harris when Julie's film commitments obliged her to turn him down. It was probably just as well: Julie would have been hopelessly miscast in that show...
...there is a conceptual failing in director Leland Moss's rendering of Goat Island, it is that he makes Angelo, and not Agata, the play's center. This leaves the three women on too much of an equal and collectively subordinate level. Moss has had to miscast himself as Angelo, which in large measure explains this shift in emphasis, since he plays the part with too little earthly charisma, and too much surface charm, to be merely an agent of anything. Angelo emerges as a likeable rather than loveable character, and his appeal reaches as much to the audience...
...almost like discussing the career of Quasimodo apart from the Inquisition. Yet the actors as individuals cannot be held responsible for their collective failure. Within the all-too-Hasty-Pudding concept of the whole production, some of the cast members fill their parts quite competently. Chris Baker, though ridiculously miscast as Mosca, delivers a good comic aside, moves comfortably around the stage, and neatly captures the slyness of the character. Peter Goldberg's Volpone is one-note throughout, since he is physically unable to simulate death-bed sickliness; otherwise Goldberg achieves a sadly uncomic lechery that fills the role...
Robert Edgar is badly miscast as the Captain, who clearly should be fat, stupid, and cruel, not thin as a rail, witty, and effeminate. He does what he does well, but it isn't what he should do. Roger Zim looks the part of the Drum Major who woos Marie, and he has a marvelously deep voice, but his braggadocio is too much a conscious parody of Anthony Quinn or the Marlboro Man; it draws laughs for that reason, but it is not right...
...only two good actors in the film (aside from Sellers) are John Mills and Ralph Richardson as the brothers but they are given little enough to do. Most of the action is centered around miscast, awkward, misty-eyed Michael Caine whose guardian is one of the brothers (you may have liked him in The Ipcress File but wait till you see him now) and his courtship with an orphan whose guardian is the other surviving brother. In an eminently forgettable role, she is a caricature of supposed Victorian modesty (her cousin's hobby of collecting eggs is deemed "obscene...