Word: sparer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Although Odets was 28 when he wrote Awake and Sing!, he could grant only his older characters credibility. As Bessie, Nancy Marchand has a despairing authority, and as her brother Morty, Michael Lombard combines unctuous self-regard and bone-deep insecurity. As the old, unrepentant radical Jacob, Paul Sparer provides a sense of guttering energy that is supposed to illuminate the hopes of the young. It does nothing of the kind. Brother and sister, husband and lover all perform in a declamatory style more appropriate to pageants than to plays. Moreover, Theodore Mann's direction takes the Bergers...
...Texas, is not even sure about the first half. "Man, I don't know!" he writes in his book The Whorehouse Papers. "I think that dude grew up on a different planet." Tune, 43, does not smoke or drink, and his West Side Manhattan apartment is even sparer than he is. Almost all the interior walls have been knocked down, and the only furniture is a bed. When guests drop by, they may sit on nine big pillows. Tune meditates in the morning and evening and spends half an hour more doing yoga exercises. Before each rehearsal of "Nine...
Director Robert Whitehead, who produced Medea in 1947, has not fired up other key actors. Paul Sparer's Creon is more like a pompous chairman of the board than a Corinthian king, and Ryan's Jason is a callow marital climber rather than the hero who brought home the Golden Fleece. The Grecian temple designed by Ben Edwards has a brooding, darksome majesty. A pity so much of this production lacks...