Word: skeist
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Pirandello's Henry IV tells of a modern-day nobleman (David Skeist '02) who has, for the last 20 years, believed himself to be Emperor Henry IV of Germany. As the play opens, his one-time paramour Matilda (Karin Alexander '02) comes to visit "Henry" in his grotesquely medieval living-space. She brings her friend Baron Belcredi (Tom Price '02), her daughter Frida (Marianne Cook '02) and a psychiatrist (Matthew Carlson) who intends to study "Henry" and attempt to cure him. Matilda and Belcredi explain the scenario to the doctor and to us before entering Henry's masquerade along with...
...Berenger, of course, that forms the keystone of the production. David Skeist '02, haggard, unkempt and unshaven, hunches his tall, thin frame into an attitude of perpetual anxiety and guilt. From beginning to end he imbues the play with a seemingly bottomless paranoic energy. This reaches its climax in the final, frightening soliloquy in which he attempts himself to become a rhinoceros, and failing, realizes he must resign himself to his uniqueness, his monstrosity, his humanity...