Word: showiest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Linda Lavin, as Mrs. Van Daan, stands out in the play's showiest role: her Mrs. Van Daan is an irrepressible chatterer, energetically discussing her flirtatious past and the superior quality of her potato latkes, but she's also worldly-wise--a popular characterization of a Jewish mother. Austin Pendleton makes Mr. Dussel both droll and sympathetic. As Otto Frank, George Hearn does come across as a caring and protective father figure, but one oddly formal with his family: his diction is too consistently calm and collected, in a situation of such tremendous pressure, to be convincing. Sophie Hayden...
...impending rough-and- tumble. Like most great playwrights, Pinter keeps writing the same work. No Man's Land is The Homecoming with fancier furniture, Old Times with more recherche recollections, The Birthday Party with a gentler goon squad. It is also, from a playwright generous to actors, the showiest acting duel in his repertoire...
...presence affords mainstream heterosexuals a comfortable entry into a violent and homoerotic world. Above all, her face, thrusting body and eerily insinuating voice -- a dagger wrapped in velvet -- keep Spider Woman vivid in memory, making it an event rather than just a show. This may not be Rivera's showiest role, but it is one in which she seems irreplaceable...
...showiest piece and ultimately the most moving is Kramer's tussle between hope and despair in Destiny. It is enriching, but not necessary, to know that the work is autobiographical and that its passion-spent central character, Ned Weeks, is a stand-in for the author, who co-founded Gay Men's Health Crisis and the more radical ACT UP only to leave each in disappointment at their failure to save lives, not least, prospectively, his own. Ned is as hilariously self-congratulatory and self-critical as he was in the Kramer play that introduced him, The Normal Heart...
...showiest role, Roscoe Lee Browne plays the neighborhood wise man. He - has reached age 65 by staying out of other people's business, suppressing his darkest rages and heeding a back-street seeress who purports to be 322 years old. He is at once dignified and absurd, wrongheaded and admirable. It is such affectionate ambivalence toward all the characters that makes Wilson's play a vivid and uplifting tone poem and never a mere polemic. W.A.H.III