Word: rabbe
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...Group 20 Players had a particularly fine season--their seventh--with only one lapse out of a schedule of five plays. By coincidence they opened with the same work as the C.D.F.'s finale: Much Ado. It was directed by Ellis Rabb, who joined the company for the first time. Rabb is one of the finest Shakespearean actors anywhere; though still very young, he is one of a handful who can boast of having acted in all thirty-seven of the Bard's plays. He provided a warm, even-keeled production on William D. Roberts' stunning, three-story set, complete...
...Streetcar Named Desire, the better of Tennessee Williams' two great plays, forced director Rabb out of the realm where he belongs. Determined to find a "new" interpretation, Rabb supplied a long program note full of fuzzy theorizing and such ideas as: "Awe is antithetical to pity. Pity is indecisive; in awe there is no escape." In stripping Blanche DuBois of her nobility and routing out all traces of pity for her, Rabb distorted the play out of all proportion. As Blanche, Cavada Humphrey fought a losing battle, and was the only cast member even to attempt mastering a Southern accent...
...both children and adults, Peter Pan. As Peter, who has from Maude Adams to the present always been played for some reason by a woman, Miss Harris was captivatingly pixyish. Eric Portman might have brought more bravado to the traditional double role of the Father and Captain Hook. Ellis Rabb provided an unbeatably riotous Smee, an elaboration of the Starveling he did in Midsummer Night's Dream at Stratford a year ago. The production employed the original music of John Crooke, which Barrie himself had termed "delightful." And special equipment was set up to allow four characters at once...
...entirely different mood, neither nymph-like nor villainous, Ellis Rabb is absolutely superb. It is no news that Mr. Rabb is a fine classic actor (having appeared as Hamlet and Lear to great critical acclaim); but as Smee, Captain Hook's sentimental side-kick, he is just plain riotous. He has but to walk across the stage to get a laugh. The characterization is similar to one he used as Starveling in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Stratford last summer; but since he has considerably more to say as Smee, the concept is considerably enlarged. The shaky voice...
Shaw's image of the romantic man, a soft and chivalrous idealizer of woman, is not a completely successful character; as usual when Shaw attempts this type, the result here is a second-rate Shelly. Ellis Rabb makes the part into a delicate caricature of delicacy, amusingly undermining any possibility of our trying to take poor Octavius seriously--which may be just as well. Tom Martin is good as the new Leporello; Cavada Humphrey and Robert Rees Evans are adequate but labored as the heroine and hero of a romantic subplot...