Word: played
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...novel, Flowers for Algernon. Keyes holds two degrees, has taught high-school and college English, and is now, at 42, lecturer in English at Ohio University. In its original shorter form. Flowers for Algernon won the Hugo Award as the best science novelette; it became an effective television play; in its expanded form it won the best novel-of-the-year Nebula Award; and it is the basis for the recent movie Charly (which, for ali its strong points does not come close to matching the book...
THERE IS a collection of essays called Hamlet: Enter Critic in which critics do their thing with what is perhaps the greatest work in English literature. They are essentially puzzled over the play's great enigma: what took hamlet so long in acting to avenge his dead father? Among the theories advanced are that Hamlet was fat, and consequently moved slowly in doing anything; that Hamlet hand an Oedipal relationship with his mother and therefore blamed himself for his father's death; and finally, an Elizabethan determinist interpretation that Hamlet's humours mixed in such a way that...
...because Hamlet, written in that wonderful time before people put critical labels on things, encompasses all of the theories and a great deal more. When facing a work of genius, criticism can only "take a line": single-out certain elements exalt them, and finally label them as "what the play is about." Unfortunately, many directors are just critics, and love to highlight themes they like at the expense of the work as a whole...
Mike Sachs as Claudius and Kathy Allyn as Gertrude were not as good as some of the others. I was told that Sachs was trying to play Claudius as a Machiavellian Prince. He succeeded only insofar as he was extremely unemotional and dry throughout, save for occasional shouts and arrgghhs. Miss Allyn wasn't bad. She played Gertrude a little like Kanga in Winnie the Pooh. Which may be about right, because Gertrude is always so concerned and motherly, even, we suppose, as she helps murder old King Hamlet...
...always interesting to see how the ghost scenes in Shakespeare are played. De Grazia has Fletcher Word, a black actor, play the Ghost from atop a platform. Word dressed entirely in black, moves with a mime's precision through Oriental poses, enshrouded always in a huge cape. The effect is very striking...