Word: poloniuses
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Those who remember Earle Hyman's exemplary Horatio in the Festival's earlier production can only be disappointed by John Devlin's bland and colorless performance. Patrick Hines, who did Rosencrantz before, has moved up to Polonius. Given to excessive handclapping, he takes the easy way out and plays the role only for its comedy. Polonius is much more than the "foolish prating knave" Hamlet calls...
HAMLET. Although Richard Burton as Hamlet and Hume Cronyn as Polonius burnish all the richness of language, wit and humor of the play, this revival, and specifically Burton's Hamlet, lacks the burning passion, the mind-tossed anguish, the self-divided will that Hamlet must have to be a true prince of tragedy...
HAMLET. Although Richard Burton as Hamlet and Hume Cronyn as Polonius burnish all the richness of language, wit and humor of the play, this revival, and specifically Burton's Hamlet, lacks the burning passion, the mind-tossed anguish, the self-divided will that Hamlet must have to be a true prince of tragedy...
With a few exceptions the supporting cast might be accused of nonsupport. Hume Cronyn's Polonius is devilishly fine, a battered human filing cabinet of platitudes who has achieved diplomatic immunity to everything but the sound of his own voice. And George Rose's First Gravedigger is a roguish, low-comic word prankster. But Alfred Drake's King Claudius is too suavely ingratiating to have killed a brother and seized a crown. He is more like mine host of the Elsinore Hilton. Eileen Her-lie is a middle-aged matron with diction; it is easier to imagine...
Clement Fowler and William Redfield made me understand for the first time how Hamlet can without any concern order Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed. They are ingratiating, flattering, effeminate, but vicious; when Hamlet kills Polonius and leaves himself exposed, they turn on him almost snarling as they order him before the king...