Word: paulina
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...that it gives wider exposure to one of Shakespeare's supreme achievements. It was exactly 30 years ago that I was bowled over by the Theatre Guild's production of the play--with Henry Daniell's penetrating Leontes, Jessie Royce Landis's imposing Hermione, and Florence Reed's unsurpassable Paulina--and I've been in love with it ever since. But productions remain exceedingly rare, and the work has garnered a great deal of badmouthing from scholars and critics, largely on the grounds that the play is different from others they know and admire...
...piano, mezzoforte, or fortissimo. And he does not succumb to the temptation to keep yelling constantly. He knows how to move, too, as when in the grips of neurosis he prowls around the circular platform like a caged animal. And he dares elicit a smile when he sputters at Paulina's husband, "I charged thee that she should not come about me," and then adds, sotto voce, "I knew she would." He also managers to ring true when he strips to the waist, takes off his crown and grovels on the floor while encouraging Paulina to tongue-lash him. Again...
...aural part of Madden's performance, however, that severely damages of this difficult role is that it requires the actor to be overwrought for a prolonged time and yet clear. Madden gargles his denunciation of Camillo, and speech after speech in his lengthy argument with Paulina is not intelligible. And when he comes to speaking over the wind-storm, it's impossible to make out a single syllable...
Quite in contrast is Paulina the queen's lady-in-waiting, cowed by nobody. She is one of drama's supreme steamrollers, telling off the king to his face, later functioning as his conscience and orchestrating the finale. Florence Reed, whose Paulina electrified audiences in the theater guild production, will forever remain the paragon. This time, Bette Henritze invokes plenty of strength; her voice is a trifle monotonous, but this is admirable work all the same...
...Paulina's husband Antigonus, William Larsen is forceful in defending Hermione to Leontes. When, on executing the order to expose the queen's baby daughter to fate and the elements he narrates his dream about Hermione, we actually see the queen upstage hovering in the air. Antigonus's departure is accompanied by Shakespeare's most startling stage direction: "Exit pursued by a bear," In Elizabethan days a real bear was used, such as the celebrated Sackerson mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor. This practice was revived in the 1948 British production, but it's a risky business...