Word: pandarus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...swept the décor and atmosphere of the play some 30 centuries forward. He has boldly evoked an Edwardian world full of prance and panoply, his Trojans very British, his Greeks very German. He has shown a siren Helen lolling against a cream-and-gold piano; he makes Pandarus frock-coated and effeminate, Thersites a disheveled cockney war photographer. He might find license for his anachronisms in the play itself, where Hector quotes Aristotle...
Troilus' firm foundation is British Poet Christopher Hassall's libretto, which keeps things happening from curtain-up. The plot presents the human side of the besieged Trojans and particularly the widow Cressida (sung by Phyllis Curtin), who succumbs to Troilus (Jon Grain), partly through the conniving of Pandarus (Norman Kelley), only to be captured by the Greeks. By the time she puts herself to the sword, she is at least as credible as Tosca, as touching as Mimi...
...changed her interpretation considerably. Instead of playing a sexy two-timer as she did last year, she makes Cressida out to be a well-meaning and affectionate girl who is the victim of circumstances. The change in role has not diminished her charms as an actress. Cressida's uncle, Pandarus, is played by Thayer David, who makes the part, that of a coarse and effeminate old man extremely amusing...