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Word: playes (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
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Usage:

...young baron Tusenbach, the lieutenant who wins Irina's hand only to be shot in a duel, Brain Bedford performs with great skill--to the extent to actually playing on the piano the middle section of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. His glasses, moustache, and long hair parted squarely in the center help make him properly homely. There is an extraordinary amount of traffic in this play--entrances and exists, greeting and farewells. One of the most moving farewells in all drama is the parting of Irina and Tusenbach in Act IV--a fine example of Chekhov's oblique method...

Author: By Caldwell Titcomb, | Title: Chekhov's 'Three sisters' Admirably Staged | 8/5/1969 | See Source »

Irina's other suitor is the captain, Solyony, who kills Tusenbach in the duel. He is a strange man, and throughout the play keeps putting scent on his hands to get rid of their smell of death--like some sort of male Lady Macbeth. Right from the first act, Charles Cioffi's portrayal is a remarkable piece of acting. Solyony speaks scarcely a half dozen times in all of Act I, and spends most of the time sitting silently on a chair in the corner. Nevertheless, Cioffi tells us a great deal about this morose and mysterious character. We notice...

Author: By Caldwell Titcomb, | Title: Chekhov's 'Three sisters' Admirably Staged | 8/5/1969 | See Source »

Incidentally, the fatal duel does not occur on stage. By his own admission, Chekhov had a hard time doing without the conventional pistol shot, which was an important feature of every one of his plays through The Three Sisters. But here, for the first time, the pistol shot takes place way off in the distance. And only in his final play, The Cherry Orchard, is there no pistol--instead we hear the forlorn sound of a far-off axe chopping a tree as the curtain falls...

Author: By Caldwell Titcomb, | Title: Chekhov's 'Three sisters' Admirably Staged | 8/5/1969 | See Source »

...himself with being secretary to his wife's lover on the local county agriculture committee--a post so petty that he has to bolster his pride by berating a subordinate for not addressing him a "Your Honor," and--like Abe Fortas--seek solace in going off by himself to play the violin. Cariou makes him genuine, well-meaning, and pathetic; and I'd swear he really puts on weight during the three and a half years covered by the play...

Author: By Caldwell Titcomb, | Title: Chekhov's 'Three sisters' Admirably Staged | 8/5/1969 | See Source »

...masterly depiction of a gradually deteriorating personality. He has never read a book, and occupies himself with little that is more lofty than his ever-present daily newspaper (in real Russian, too). He must have been a pretty inferior physician at the outset, and in the course of the play he sinks to the belief that absolutely nothing matters anymore. So far gone is Carnovsky's doctor that, after washing and drying his hand in a basin, he proceeds immediately to wash them all over again. At the end Carnovsky shows us the mere shell of a man with...

Author: By Caldwell Titcomb, | Title: Chekhov's 'Three sisters' Admirably Staged | 8/5/1969 | See Source »

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