Word: shakespeareanly
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...have ever known." When the play was finished, apart from critics who claimed to miss polish and high oratorical style, the cheering audience was willing to go Siobhan one better. The response suggested that the production (headed for Broadway in the fall) may be one of the most spectacular Shakespearean shows yet seen...
...great deal of the play's aura of horror is captured in the current Cambridge Drama Festival production, directed by Jose Quintero. This is young Mr. Quintero's first Shakespearean assignment, although he has wrought several nearmiracles with modern American works. And he has attacked Macbeth with freshness and, at times, audacity. He has given us a sufficiently fast-moving production of Shakespeare's fastest-moving play. The theatre quivers with excitement as characters swirl about the set, and race up and down the aisles to envelop the audience in the action (though this is carried somewhat to excess...
...thrones (though these last seem to suggest the red lacquer of China rather than the rough furniture of medieval Scotland). Marie Day has designed suitable costumes; and Richard Baldridge has devised musical and sound effects, for percussion or bagpipes, that are more primitive than one normally finds in a Shakespearean production--but then I suppose Macbeth's milieu was quite primitive...
...Truthfulness obliges me to state that herein lies the chief weakness of this production. Now Robards is one of our most richly endowed native actors, and his performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable. But he is as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. This is not surprising in view of the fact that his only previous experience with the Bard was a brief go at Hotspur last summer in Canada. Good classical diction is not achieved overnight, and some never master it after a lifetime...
...supporting roles in Macbeth are notoriously less fully rounded on paper than those in the other great Shakespearean tragedies, and thus require special efforts for appreciable individualization. In a good many cases the present cast is up to the task...