Word: tucci
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...Daisy (Virginia Vestoff), Frank falls in love with her. Daisy is a teacher who poignantly wonders how the quiet lessons of the classroom can ever erase from little children's minds the terrorist traumas of the streets. In flashback, Frank's grand father woos Kitty (Maria Tucci), an ardent prototypical feminist...
...Maria Tucci is much better as Proctor's wife Elizabeth, who at a crucial moment tries to help her adulterous husband by telling her first lie, when he is counting on her to be truthful as usual. And she makes the play's final moments moving as her cheeks course with tears in a combination of sadness, joy, and pride. Tovah Feldshuh is properly sexy as the teenage girl Abigail, who accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft in hopes of getting Proctor for herself...
Shakespeare mentions the resemblance between Hermione and her teenage daughter Perdita. And, following a 19th-century precedent, Kahn has once again entrusted both roles to Maria Tucci, since the two characters are on stage together only in the final scene. Kahn gets around this problem by cutting Perdita's half dozen lines and using a stand-in facing away from the audience. I suppose it's ungallant to suggest that Miss Tucci can no longer really pass for a teenager, but she makes an appealing attempt. As Queen Hermione, she can speak eloquently when required to, and stand immobile...
...text makes a point of calling attention to the resemblance between the two women, and Maria Tucci does beautifully by them both. She is at her best as the warm and unflappable queen eloquent in her restraint even in the face of ferocity...
Kahn has assigned the roles of both Queen Hermione and her daughter Perdita to Maria Tucci. He is thus following the lead of Mary Anderson, who in 1887, two years before retiring at 30, made a great hit playing both parts. The doubling of roles was of course a commonplace in Shakespeare's company. The problem here is that Hermione and Perdita both appear together in the final scene. Although Perdita has only six lines, it is crucial for the harmony and symmetry of the ending that nobody be missing, that we see two middle-aged couples and one young...