Word: shakespearean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...high portion of the Roman wall that once encircled Londinium forms part of the basement wall of a new office building; pedestrians peek in through sidewalk windows. Allowing the Rose, the only Elizabethan theater ever discovered, to disappear once again sounds like the stuff of a Shakespearean tragedy. "Replicas of Elizabethan theaters are being built everywhere," observes actor Ian McKellen, "but this is the real thing, and you don't throw away the real thing...
Based on Levine's account, the answer, in part, seems to be that American cultural behavior was genuinely different in the early to mid-19th century. Urban workers did spend their free time listening to theater performances which included magic tricks, physical comedy and Shakespearean soliloquys. Bands larger than current ensembles but smaller than full-fledged orchestras would perform both classical music and popular ditties. In the case of Shakespeare, Levine cleverly demonstrates how well people knew the Bard's works by providing examples of the careful, complex parodies of Shakespeare's plays that were performed in the mid-19th...
...biggest resident theater company in North America is not to be found in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago. Nor, as stage cognoscenti might suppose, is it in a thriving regional center like Minneapolis, home of the Guthrie, or a festival city like Ashland, site of the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. The champion -- as measured cumulatively by number of productions and performances, size of troupe, total audience and budget -- is located in an unpretentious town in the Canadian province of Ontario, about 90 miles from the skyscrapers of Toronto. It is a place that began with scarcely any claim...
Jacobi, a Shakespearean best known in the U.S. for the title role in the PBS mini-series I, Claudius, again employs fidgety mannerisms. But Turing emerges distinctly in his fierce, futile independence. Although joined by fine, mostly British actors -- Jenny Agutter, Michael Gough and Rachel Gurney among them -- Jacobi gives what approximates a masterly one-man show. In a brilliantly calibrated scene near the end, he makes Turing's happiest moment also serve as a sad metaphor for his yearning, and inability, to communicate. He enfolds himself in the arms of a Greek youth, neither able to speak the other...
...does have force, treachery and charisma on his side. There is a funny scene in which a Shakespearean actor (Richard Howells) coaches Ui in speech and movement by running him through Marc Antony's speech in Julius Caesar. At first Raphael's imitation of Howells' already exaggerated enunciation and movement makes him look like John Cleese's Minister of Silly Walks. But the walk soon becomes an obscene goosestep, the speech a guttural shout. Raphael must have watched films of old Hitler speeches, because he has der Fuhrer's mannerisms, voice and gestures down pat. He is truly frightening...