Word: portia
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...International Friendship League, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Boston Park Department Office. The Offices of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts State House, The Unitarian-Universalist Association, The Massachusetts Prison Association, Portia Law School and Calvin Coolidge College all sit on the peak of Beacon Hill. It is a tiny two-block neighborhood and for the most part, the institutions that reside there are devoted to enriching the lot of human beings. "So," says one Beacon St. resident, "how did Calvin Coolhitch Cowitch evah get up heah...
Needless to say, the lovers count for a lot in this version. The actors are more than up to the weight of the burden. Relaxed and elegant from first to last, Janet Bowes as Portia sails through the play with an effortlessness one almost never finds in a house production. As far as I'm concerned, Dudley House can put her in any part they want...
...reaches his peak, of course, in the Trial Scene -- which Kahn has staged admirably, and which is marred chiefly by a mechanical delivery on Portia's part that extends even to the "quality of mercy" speech. Carnovsky's playing throughout this scene is a marvel. Here he lets himself lose control twice and shatters courtroom decorum by pounding on the judge's bench as though he were Khruschchev banging his shoe in the United Nations assembly. His modulation from this to his final "I am content" is masterly. When he makes his final exit, he stumbles on the stairs, then...
...Morocco, but he doesn't get out of the part as much as Earle Hyman did a decade ago. (As often done, Morocco's two scenes are fused into one, which is detrimental to the play's structure, such as it is). When he chooses wrong and has departed, Portia points up the racial slur in her tag-line, "Let all of his complexion choose me so." As for the Prince of Arragon, James Valentine makes him a heavily accented and logorrheicninny; and, when he goes, Portia just can't resist making fun of his Castilian accent. She should talk...
...Portia has long been a symbol of justice, and has even lent her name to law schools. But this Portia is out-and-out dishonest. When the suitors for her hand come to make their choices from among the caskets, they are of course supposed to have free rein, as prescribed in her father's will. But this Portia does everything she can to lead the princes of Morocco and Arragon to a wrong choice and Bassanio to the right one. She cheats on her own father...