Word: mistressful
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...fascination it holds for young directors. Buechner died at 23 in 1837. He left behind, among other writings, a jumbled, partly illegible manuscript of an unfinished play based on the real-life case of Johann Christian Woyzeck, an army barber executed in 1824 for the murder of his mistress. The order of scenes in this manuscript is indeterminate; some scenes are mere fragments. The ending of the play is unclear. The dialogue in both the German original and most translations borders on psychotic gibberish...
...very bad acting. Paul Balmuth, the lead, has not much business being on the Loeb mainstage. His range of expressiveness is disastrously limited; his voice is pathetically inadequate; his mosquito-like dartings back and forth across the stage grow quite irritating after a while. When he plays to his mistress, Marie, he looks and acts like a little boy; with the Doctor, he seems completely unconcerned to be the victim of a deranged experimenter; with the Drum Major (when he ought to be dead drunk, incidentally, and not stone sober) his "Let's be friends" sounds like Mickey Mouse addressing...
...Marat/Sade is so intrinsically exciting, and TCB's acting so good, that the play is exhaustingly effective. John Coe (Herald), Frank Cassidy (Coulmier) and Bronia Stefan (Marat's mistress Simonne) deserve mention. Roberta Collinge and Josephine Lane highlight the chorus, and the full-throated Katherine Garnett (who drools) very nearly takes the show. Go, if you think you can Brook it. But hope David Wheeler tightens up Act I by tonight, when I'm going again...
CACTUS FLOWER is a sex comedy from France that asks whether a Don Juanish dentist (Barry Nelson) should ask his adoring assistant (Lauren Bacall) to be his accomplice in a plot against his mistress. Would Samson ask Delilah to trim his hair...
...tragicomic misadventures of another forlorn young creature whose dealings with men often take a businesslike turn for the worse. She is only a butler's daughter, but James Mason, as master of the house, has a handsome proposition for her. "I want you to be my mistress," he says, as he hands her a written contract spelling out magnanimous terms. Squinting at the fine print, Georgy wonders aloud: "Will we have to have shareholders and things...