Word: portias
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Bassanio is generally thought to be an attractive young man, "a scholar and a soldier," and, Portia states, "the best deserving a fair lady." But John Cunningham uses an annoyingly exaggerated clipped delivery, and his inflections leave no doubt that he is less drawn to the fair lady than to her wealth ("a lady richly left,"sunny locks. . . like a golden fleece"). And when Shylock puts a finger on his shoulder, he pulls back in a gesture of loathing.M...
...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...
...scenes in Portia's Belmont, Ed Wittstein has designed an outdoor garden setting dominated by an enormous tree branch with leaves of -- you guessed it -- gold. Portia appears in a peach gown (designed, like all the other costumes, by Jose Varona) and carrying a parasol. It is not long before we realize that this Portia, in the hands of Barbara Baxley, is a thoughtless, superficial woman, and probably frigid to boot. Miss Baxley's nasal and mindless mode of speaking doesn't help much, either; she constitutes no improvement over Katharine Hepburn, who was so disastrous a Portia...
...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...