Word: shows
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Arnold finally finished signing. Hercules shook his hand, promised to show him the Kennedy Library the next time he was up, directed him to the Harvest. Six-times Mr. Olympia, but still a big kid, he walked like a big kid, kind of lurching, walked right into cars on the way down the street. There really was something childlike about Arnold, Hercules decided, not in a bad way, but something refreshing in his simple outlook on life, his naive egoism, his sense of endless possibility. Hercules went back to the gym to lift weights...
...SUPPOSED to hold a mirror to nature, but when a play sets actors portraying actors, the theater can turn into a house of mirrors. Resonances and multiple entendres give performers a chance to show off and audiences the opportunity to smile knowingly. George Kaufman and Edna Ferber's durable comedy doesn't make too much of this complexity, not nearly as much as some other plays in the genre, like David Mamet's A Life in the Theater. The Royal Family sticks closely to the bustling, three-act comedy formula that Kaufman and his collaborators used in so many...
Three generations of the Cavendish family grace the show, each with its doubts and troubles but all united in the unshakable belief that they hold the key to theatrical success in their genes. Hitting the right notes of arrogance and aristocratic off-handedness must be a trial. and not surprisingly only one of the Cavendishes at the Loeb finds the perfect balance. Shirley Wilber animates Fanny Cavendish, the grand dame of both stage and family, with accomplished ease: she seems as comfortable acting the role on stage as her comfortable acting the role on stage as her character does adding...
Other performers in the show, too, seem like those good, dependable singers who know their art but whose voices go a little flat on the high notes. Alison Carey's Gwen--the youngest Cavendish, who's torn between love and the stage--gives a fine performance except when called upon, in the ineptly-written love scenes or her own renunciation of a stage career, to display excesses of emotion. Rounding out the clan, Michael Cantor's Anthony--the rake of the family, who sold out to Hollywood--hams his way through his part with plenty of panache but without some...
...script off the actors' hands, but chose not to, using dull blocking and an entirely static--though lavish--set. The only evidence of a director's hand in the production at all, in fact, is the presence of a pianist (Jeffrey Halpern) on stage before each act, playing show tunes and Gershwin with flair but without much point...