Word: rage
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...listen to Jonathan Miller, who quit his job as one of the National's associate directors in 1975 and still admits to getting into "a homicidal rage" when thinking of Hall: "Working for him was like working for Richard Nixon. Like Nixon, he always has a couple of underlings around who finish his enemies off by spoiling their reputations. I've talked to all of them-Laurence Olivier, John Dexter and Michael Blakemore [three of Hall's onetime colleagues]-and there is a unanimous feeling of righteous indignation...
...course, originated the role of Norman in the theater, and offers a perfectly polished version of it to such posterity as the film vaults grant. On its face his is a comic turn, an impersonation of a homosexual impersonating a nanny to a grownup child. But his mincing rage for order has deeper roots; this small and isolated backstage world has offered him, until Sir started disrupting it, an asylum from the larger world he could never manage. Subtle observation and marvelously controlled invention mark Courtenay's work...
Despite the prop impediments, the cast, filled with Boston professional actors, veteran Harvard actors, and several novices to the Harvard stage, has no trouble delving into its characters. Freshman Michael Albion gives a sensitive portrayal of King Leontes, using his monologues to reveal his characters' insecurity, blind rage, and pompous narcissicism. Maryann Bergonzi as Paulina and Pamela Knickrehm as Hermione, two local actresses, give superb performances. Bergonzi stands out with her exquisite enuncition and her somber, melancholy, yet determined facial expressions. Two more freshmen--Tucker McCrady as Florizel, King Polixenes' son, and Laurence Bouvard as Leontes's long-lost daughter...
...wiles in similarly unpromising venues. Snider's equivalent of the New England territory is the wet-T-shirt contest, the dream of multimillion-dollar sales for a Dorothy Stratten poster. There is, however, this huge difference between these figures: where Loman was damp with pathos, Snider burns with rage as he watches his discovery moving up and away from him. Seeing through the hypocrisy of those who build empires on sleaze, he cannot believe they will shut him out just because he wears snakeskin cowboy boots to their revels or drapes a prematurely friendly arm around...
...course, they will. Snider's rage, turned inward, becomes the depression out of which he kills the uncouth self that betrayed him, as well as the girl who never knew she was supposed to be not just his lover, meal ticket and wife but also his better self, source of the ultimate good first impression. It is a cold Q.E.D. for a chilling movie that opens with shots of freeway traffic hurtling past the murder site, Snider's pad, and closes with shots of Dorothy's intimates going about their mundane business while her naked body lies...