Word: stehlin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This goes double for the overheated, young-buck-turned-shmuck performance that mars virtually every scene in which Jack Stehlin appears (in the role of the murdered Alonzo's brother). The show's only virtuoso acting comes from John Bottoms as the tragic villain De Flores. As an impoverished nobleman in the Vermandero household, De Flores is the instrument of Beatrice-Joanna's downfall, and he oozes evil. Fine-tuned to gruesome perfection by Bottoms (here of the shiny bald pate and knock-kneed posture), De Flores is a cross between Igor and Iago, first fawning on Beatrice-Joanna, then...
Wheeler wisely cast actors strong on the comic aspect. John Bottoms moves smoothly from Roy Orbison raptures to sputtering outrage to weary depression; he can't quite bring off the tender pathos written into the script, but few could do any better. Stehlin turns a stock soap opera part (the idealistic male ingenue) into a combination of Matthew Broderick and Woody Allen acting out a Roy Rogers fantasy; he suffers worst from the capricious plotting, and can't expand his stage presence into a full three dimensions...