Word: shakespeareanly
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...Pulitzer-prizewinning drama. Dreamgirls. A pearl in the strand of notable U.S. musicals. There is dazzling elegance in Theoni V. Aldredge's costumes, and a young belter named Jennifer Holliday can start, stop and steal a show. (See above.) The Dresser. Paul Rogers plays a decrepit provincial Shakespearean actor-manager; Tom Courtenay, his valet. In double image, they are Lear and his Fool-and both are magnificent...
...provinces paying flawed but fervent fealty to Shakespeare. The time is 1942 in bomb-blasted England, and the war has depleted Sir's resources to an extremely tatty troupe: "I'm reduced to old men, cripples and Nancy-boys. Herr Hitler has made it very difficult for Shakespearean companies...
...less, when set to popular arrangements, every facet of the play takes on more depth and reality as the open space and fresh setting give it room to breathe. Letting the script do the talking, as Samuels does, is probably the best thing anyone can do for a Shakespearean comedy. Furnished with so logical and well-thought-out a setting, it's no surprise that the rest of the play should so serenely follow...
...mache. Some are here because "I couldn't stand to look at my math homework anymore," some to get "comps"--complimentary tickets available to anyone who helps "put in" a Loeb production. Some settle down to fingerpaint the platforms and Grecian arches for two hours because they will deliver Shakespearean soliloquies from them in a few days, or because, like Peter Miller, they are the set designer...
...production's first big surprise comes with its Ophelia (Ursula Drabek), whom Cain sees not as a shrinking victim of cruelty and circumstance--the usual interpretation--but as a strong and independent woman. Creating this Ophelia takes imaginative line-reading, a good deal of un-Shakespearean byplay that never made it into a script, and some outright cheating--for instance, an extra exchange of "Ophelia!" and "NO!" as Polonius tries to force his daughter to tell the King about Hamlet's visit to her chamber...