Word: ophelias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Stratford, Conn, (through Sept. 14). The comedy Much Ado About Nothing is directed by London's Peter Gill in his American debut; Henry V has Len Cariou in the title role; while Hamlet is a stunning full-length version with Brian Bedford as the prince, Maria Tucci as Ophelia and Morris Carnovsky as Polonius. For variety, Chekhov makes a premier appearance at this festival in a supple staging of The Three Sisters...
...last scene; Nicol Williamson pours his blood into every scene. Williamson's Dane would have led a sit-in at the University of Wittenberg, or burned it to the ground. The rottenness of the state, the corruption of his elders, the brevity of his mother's love, Ophelia's frail readiness to be her father's pawn-all these nauseate him. Yet his antic disposition never leaves him, and a Hamlet has never been presented with so much caustic wit. With this performance, Nicol Williamson makes all previous Hamlets fade...
...scene; Nicol Williamson pours his blood into every scene. Williamson's fiery Dane would have led a sit-in at the University of Wittenberg, or burned it to the ground. The rottenness of the state, the corruption of his elders, the brevity of his mother's love, Ophelia's frail readiness to be her father's pawn-all these nauseate him. Yet his antic disposition never leaves him, and a Hamlet has never been presented with so much caustic wit. With this performance, Nicol Williamson has turned a page in the book of acting...
...soliloquies are delivered as if Hamlet were in desperate need of geriatric drugs. Rabb is too monotonous for eloquence and too weary for anger. The rest of the cast is almost uniformly inept. Horatio is played like a lost Boy Scout, Gertrude as a matronly simp and Ophelia as an epileptic. Only Richard Easton's Claudius has the dignity of a solid stage presence, and Philip Minor's First Gravedigger has wry antic authority. In view of his acting and directing, perhaps Ellis Rabb should really be listed as the First Gravedigger...
Dressed in a scruffy black cardigan and tights, Williamson has set his emotional barometer for a hurricane from the beginning. He is tuned to his own internal weather, and to hell with the climate outside. He has already slept with his Ophelia, and in the "Get thee to a nunnery" scene he blatantly snuggles in the horizontal with her, defying Polonius to catch them in the act. Few actors can be more sexually insinuative in speech than Williamson, though in Hamlet's dirty, double-meaning banter with Ophelia ("country matters?") the voice is not that of a suitor...