Word: singewald
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Singewald must be one of those 60-year old Cliffies who pitter into an English history course two minutes late while the professor indulgently holds up his lecture. Somehow the boys at Kirkland House talked this nice old lady into assuming the title role of The Madwoman of Chaillot, a despicable effort to save some money in make-up and costumes...
...certainly hope they're satisfied; sweet Miss Singewald pitters away with their show, and they better check the Kirkland House silverware and stationery before they lock...
Giraudoux's play needs Miss Singewald. Its concave philosophy -- the rich, destructive, conformist bad guys against the poor, poetic good guys -- wouldn't float in the Dead Sea without a strong focus on the heroine. For example, it all comes right in the second act, as three madwomen (Miss Singewald, Valerie Clark, and Carla Barringer) amicably enter Miss Singewald's basement to plan the elimination of the world's evil men. They attack each other, apologize, criticize, contradict, dare, resolve, shift positions, and conclude as amicably as when they came in. And in the end, the world's evil...
Despite wayward lighting and some shaky scenery, all eyes remain on Amy Singewald in The Madwoman of Chaillot. And when the evil people are banished from the world, when pigeons fly again, air turns to crystal, grass sprouts on pavements, and perfect strangers hug each other, the shaking scenery seems part of the celebration...
...Singewald, as the aged Countess of Rousillon, sends her young son off to the French court and reacts to his priggish follies with precisely the right air of elegantly detached concern. Anthony Dawson, as the old lord Lafeu, looks and moves as an old man should; in delivering what could be Polonius-like lines, he shuns both casualness and sententiousness. Peter Johnson, as young Count Bertram's follower Parolles, burlesques his role into an amusing Falstaff figure...