Word: pacino
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...Star Trek. In fact the new production seems unimpressed by all the play's melodramatic moments, eliminating a lot of them and embarrassing the rest. One might dismiss this as evidencing a pedantic belief that audiences don't like cheap thrills, were it not that Al Pacino, formerly of The Godfather and as Richard a properly menacing uncle, presumably knows better...
...curse him: he never delivers the speech about how no creature loves him or exhorts his men to follow him "if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell." And though TCB does have the grace to let him reprove the deep-revolving witty Buckingham for swearing. Pacino mutters the reproof so softly that nobody can hear him. Hastings' head doesn't exactly bounce, but it doesn't exactly terrify either, and why Richard's unfortunate nephews should be so unmistakeably female is a mystery deeper than any of Richard's plots. Possibly someone with a misplaced sense...
...THIS MATTERS LESS than you might expect, because David Wheeler, the director, doesn't stress Richard's melodramatic side, offering instead a sad, slight cynic whom Pacino makes astonishingly convincing until he loses interest towards the end. Pacino speaks measuredly and quietly, with sudden intervals of rage and continual flashes of humor, and when he talks of descanting on his own deformity or wonders at the blindness that finds him a marv'llous proper man, he means what he says. In even his blackest lies, we sense some sincerity, as though he has indeed determined to prove a villain reluetantly...
Most of the cast can't match him, and only intermittently--in the fatuous joy of Norman Ornellas as the doomed and "sweating lord" of Hastings, for example--does the play rise to its full height and mock the dead bones that lie scatt'red by. Penelope Allen and Pacino offer another such moment in the scene where he woos her before her murdered husband's bier; except for Clarence's dream. Richard III's poetry doesn't sing of its own accord like the later plays', but Allen's almost lilting threnody...
...those who still participate in this pastime the up-coming week will bring three heavy-duty openings. Little Godfather A1 Pacino comes to the Loeb as Richard III. Pacino, who played in the Basic Training of Pavle Hummel downtown last spring, has a terrific stage presence that will soon become justifiably renowned. Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince do Bergman in A Little Night Music, a new musical comedy. Previews start Saturday: Vogue Magazine predicts. "It's a winner." No, No Nanette is also in town. Since this dreary musical spectacle originally glorified New York and Atlantic City back...