Word: taverner
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Everyone wanted to help the new owners of the Mirage bar, a sleazy little tavern on Chicago's Near North Side. For just $10, the fire inspector was willing to ignore the exposed electrical wiring. For $50, the plumbing inspector "fixed" the leaky pipes, and for $100, the ventilation inspector overlooked $2,000 worth of necessary duct work. Jukebox and pinball purveyors not only offered kickbacks but showed the new management how to skim off profits...
...setting is a tavern near Boston. The time is 1828. The hero is an O'Neill staple, the man of illusions-cum-sorrows, bottle-fed. With the aid of drink, Con Melody (Jason Robards) cultivates a highly colored remembrance of things past-the Gaelic gallant seducing the lovelies of Europe, the fearless cavalry major decorated on a Spanish field of honor by the great Wellington himself. In sorry reality, he is an impoverished tavern keeper too proud to tend bar as his father did in Ireland. Indeed, pride hagrides Con Melody, like the Greek Furies, except that...
Practical politics. But is that all? At the Boar's Head tavern, Prince Hal carouses with his companions in open parody of the society at court; at court, "Hotspur" Percy (the other Hal) releases his rage with the complete lack of self-control typical of the society at the Boar. The two worlds, in other words, are peopled with men and women of the same mettle, though any good production of Henry will, as if constructing a strong suit of armor, in joining the various elements hold them in tension...
Every element in the Loeb production conspires to undercut the play's serious intention. As if taking the cue from Donald Soule's unbalanced set design, which places the richly-colored tavern hearth flush against the dry burlap of symmetrical castle towers, the comic scenes, appearing in the midst of the serious, only seem to mock them. The peak of this production is reached when Falstaff, balancing his weight on a chair balanced on a table top, wearing a pillow on his head as crown, chastises Hal in mimicry of his father, the king. Even at the climax...
...neither the failure to flesh out roles nor the numerous technical difficulties that reveal the weakness at the heart of his production. Instead, just as the progress of the prince from tavern to court expresses the theme of the play, so Jonathan Emerson's performance as Hal points up the lesson at the Loeb. Emerson handles his comic scenes skillfully, lolling drunkenly onstage, stingingly imitating Hotspur and his lady Percy, and showing, as when he helps the helpless Falstaff into his boots, a tender and subtle shift of mood. But when confronted with a serious scene, Emerson abandons his character...