Word: sparer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Paul Sparer's blunt and pragmatic Cassius is fine in the first half of the play, but degenerates into overwrought fustian towards the end. In his quarrel with Brutus before Philippi, his low delivery of "Brutus, bait not not me," with shaking knee, is ten times more powerful than all the torrent of screaming and bellowing he soon gives vent...
Young Alan Howard is appealing as Falstaff's page, especially when he vainly tries to conceal his master behind his tiny slip of a body. Paul Sparer brings a comically expressive face and drawn-out speech ("Jee-ee-su [long pause], dead!") to the senile Justice Shallow, but Patrick Hines overdoes his trembling and doddering companion Justice Silence...
...from being a barbarous monster, Holofernes (Paul Sparer) is Shaw's Caesar, an aphoristic philosopher-king who erotically brainwashes the girl. She swoon-dives into his bed, only to knife him to death at dawn (Giraudoux's style forbids a gory beheading). Judith's romantic rationale for the killing is that love was bound to be blunted by repetition or betrayed by neglect...
...schoolboy romantics and when-empire-was-in-flower nostalgia. No amount of skilled acting can wholly conceal that General Allenby (John Williams) is a stock pukka sahib, that the commander at Deraa (Geoffrey Keen) is a stock sweaty Turkish dog of a villain, and that Auda Abu Tayi (Paul Sparer) is a stock native chief, corrupt but endearing...
...Paul Sparer is a stuffed-shirt Ulysses who delivers his two lengthy disquisitions on degree and on time with imposing sonority. During the first, the satirical touch comes when Patrick Hines' gruff Agamemnon clearly doesn't suffer garrulity gladly and impatiently drums his fingers on the table...