Word: shakespeareanisms
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Could it be that the actor has formed a permanent mind meld with the melancholy Danish prince? In a career that has spanned 15 years of movies, Kline, like the Shakespearean character he most adores, has defied all attempts at easy explanation. He routinely follows up a mainstream Hollywood star turn (like 1993's Dave) with an eccentric role in a smaller film (like last year's Fierce Creatures). He switches--almost as though compelled to do so--from dark dramas like The Ice Storm to broad comedy like In & Out, movies he made back to back. He can play...
With his performance as Howard Brackett in In & Out--the Frank Oz comedy about an Indiana schoolteacher who is outed as a homosexual during a former student's televised acceptance speech at the Oscars--Kline brings his Shakespearean inner torment to a comic apex. "I always assumed he'd always known he was gay since adolescence," Kline says of the character. "But like most of us, he has found a way to accommodate that denial." His portrayal of Ben Hood, a father torn between responsibility and lust in The Ice Storm, a 1970s period drama set in suburban Connecticut, also...
Today, rewinding to him in Of Mice and Men (1939) alongside Lon Chaney Jr. or Second Chorus (1940) with Fred Astaire is unsettling; the resemblance is evident, yet it seems somehow not to be him. But that other Burgess Meredith was everything else, from a Shakespearean actor to the quacking Penguin in TV's Batman. He directed himself and Charles Laughton in The Man on the Eiffel Tower, co-produced On Our Merry Way with Henry Fonda and James Stewart, and made three Twilight Zone episodes in 1959. He was married four times, served in the Air Force, and crusaded...
...this summer, Harvard-Radcliffe Summer Theater decides to end their eclectic season with one of Bill's more controversial works, "The Taming of the Shrew." But the big question remains: is this production yet another bland, unadventurous side dish on the already-full plate of generic Shakespearean theater, or does it break through the gelatin mold as the summer's most delectable new entree...
...laughter from the audience with their girlish giggles. Everyone's costumes are a hoot, from the prologue's two-sizes-too-small jogging suits to the servants' funky get-ups. Again, once the actual story begins, some of the more original artistic concepts are sacrificed in favor of both Shakespearean traditions and basic silliness. But even these potentially fatal flaws are handled so charmingly by the cast that one can't help enjoying the somewhat misogynistic parade o' laughs unfolding onstage...