Word: orsino
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...alterations in the casting, often for the better. Jeremy Geidt's toping Toby and Jacqueline Coslow's merry Maria are superior to their 1978 counterparts, and Reno Roop's sappy Sir Andrew is just as funny as his predecessor's. Robert Stattel has been upgraded from Antonio to Duke Orsino, and acquits himself admirably if without the three-dimensionality that Lawrence Guittard gave the role...
...woos Olivia from afar, Orsino usually comes off as insipid and invertebrate. How welcome, then, to find Laurence Guittard imbuing the role with solidity! Orsino's understanding lags behind his feelings, but the man does feel. Guittard gives us the melancholy, but he also gives us the passion and assertiveness (the name Orsino, after all, means "bearish"). He speaks sonorously and creates a duke of real size...
Jeanne Button's costume designs are for the most part exemplary. And all the men in Orsino's household are identifiable through having shoes with bright red heels. In any game it's good to be able to tell the teams apart easily...
...much care for most of Laura Crow's eclectic costumes either. The ones for Olivia's household, post-Elizabethan but still European, are passable. But those for Orsino and his attendants are light organdy dresses that seem to have wandered out of some edition of The Arabian Nights. Is this supposed to be a reverse comment on Viola's transvestism...
Robert Murch (Sir Toby) and Michael Tolaydo (Orsino) do little more than get through their lines, though Mary Doyle wins a few points for her Maria. Making his professional debut here is Peter Francis-James, doubling the supporting roles of Valentine and an Officer. Though these offer little opportunity, it is at least apparent that Francis-James has learned to speak quite beautifully at the Royal Academy in London, where he played Orsino. I wish he had been entrusted with the role here...