Word: shakespeareanisms
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...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...
McKellen is most charming when he tries, with noteable success, to establish an informal relationship with the audience. He has a seemingly endless supply of lively anecdotes, touching on the life of the Bard, the knotty question of updated Shakespearean productions and moments in his own 25-year career...
Perhaps the most enjoyable bits of Shakespearean lore center on critical judgments made by G.B. Shaw and Samuel Pepys. He also possesses a great gift for evoking the hustle and bustle of Shakespeare's London and the Globe Theatre...