Word: shohet
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BOTH BRIAN MCCUE and Grace Shohet have displayed considerable talent over the last few years in Harvard theater but have emerged with somewhat limited personae--McCue as a clever, charming but extremely mannered performer who shines in musicals and farces, Shohet as a technically competent but brash actress whose specialty is destructive bitchiness. I looked forward to seeing them as Vanya and Sonya because both parts would demand a considerable stretch, a certain nakedness that neither has hitherto displayed. But instead of stretching to their parts, both have stretched the parts to accommodate themselves. Shohet has made Sonya, the most...
...rest of the cast fares less well, unable to break free of Sellars's spell, like automatons in a technocracy. Grace Shohet is properly bitchy as Goneril and Anne Clarke makes a vapidly cruel Regan but they remain one-dimensional. James Bundy plays Kent with remarkable sincerity but his brawl with Oswald (a surprisingly meaty role in the hands of David Prum) sinks to absurdity. Mathew Horsman and Judah Mandlebaum labor with Albany and Cornwall and Max Cantor skates onstage intermittently as the court's errand...
...ONLY PERFORMANCE that approaches Clemenson's is Grace Shobet's courageous Paulina, and the scenes between Shohet and Clemenson are the best in the play. Shohet outshines Kim Bendheim (Hermione), who is distractingly nervous in the opening scene but rallies to embody virtue, as Shakespeare intended. Bendheim is particularly strong in her trial scene, where Redford's blocking is also at its best--simply but effectively showing the relative virtues of the characters. Hermione stands on a small box above all her accusers; with their backs to the audience...
...WHEN THE ACTION switched to Bohemia in the fourth act, Redford stayed behind in Sicilia. In another production an act as terrible as this would destroy the entire show. But Redford's exceptional talents shine nonetheless in the other four acts--which are gilded by the exceptional performances of Shohet and Clemenson. Shohet's performance is of a calibre rare for the Harvard stage. Clemenson's performance is a of a calibre rare for any stage...
...cast, for the most part, deserves such a show--one would be pressed to find three stage personalities as obnoxious as Brian McCue, Grace Shohet, and Fred Barton. With his pinched face and short catalogue of exaggerated expressions, McCue mugs like an eight-year old who wants a new tricycle; Shohet evokes Ethel Merman; Barton, the ham-handed piano player, thinks it's enough to bellow in a smug voice and grin idiotically like George Burns, jutting his prognathous jaw like a salient into the Comic Void...