Word: portias
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Witnessed in the average, seedy courtroom, the law seldom appears in the vestments of majesty, and the justice it dispenses often descends with a harshness very unlike Portia's rain from heaven. But for Author Sybille (A Legacy) Bedford, courtrooms hold living drama. Two years ago, in The Trial of Doctor Adams (TIME, March 16, 1959), she showed a spectacular talent for lending suspense and excitement to a criminal trial by heightening, not distorting, the events through unsparing observation. Since then she has prowled courts in Britain and all over Europe, observing, with her keen novelist...
...movie stars, Katharine Hepburn and Robert Ryan. They are both fine performers in their proper spheres, which in neither case includes Shakespeare. This unsuitability carries with it no ignominy; and the obvious devotion and will of these two cannot compensate. In the past decade, Miss Hepburn has played Rosalind, Portia, Beatrice, and Viola--none with great success. Ryan has done Coriolanus professionally and other roles informally. The handwriting on the wall is clear. The fact that a movie star, Marlon Brando, gave us in the film version of Julius Caesar an Antony unlikely to be surpassed is no cause...
Laurinda Barrett was an admirable Portia, and Robert Blackburn a forceful Bassanio. But Basil Langton failed to give much color to the title role of Antonio...
Kilty is handsomely assisted by William Roberts' monumental two-story unit set, representing a corner of Venice, complete with tessellated pavement and an animal-head fountain spouting water. The wall beneath inverted-V stairways folds out to transplant us to Portia's greenery-bedecked residence at Belmont. Gilbert Helmsley, Jr. has designed some fine lighting...
Laurinda Barrett makes an admirable Portia, in both the latter's personae; and Olive Dunbar is a model Nerissa. Joyce Ebert's Jessica is attractive but vocally uneven...