Word: violas
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...Viola, who spends almost the whole play disguised as the pageboy Cesario, we have Lynn Redgrave, attired in an aquamarine suit and sporting a head of short red hair. She brings a surprisingly forceful voice and a sure comic instinct. It is fun to watch her lapse from her assumed machismo--as when, on exclaiming of Olivia, "She loves me sure," she girlishly claps her hands over her face, or repeatedly swoons at the prospect of having to duel with Sir Andrew. Her performance perhaps owes something to her recent portrayal of another witty and manly woman, Shaw's Saint...
...down somewhat on all the donning and doffing and crumpling of her tricorne. Freedman has involved her in one inspired bit of innovative staging: during the singing of "O Mistress Mine" Orsino and Olivia appear in the opposing balconies, each meditatively gazing up into the night sky; Viola silently enters below, and, while listening, looks up at first one and then the other. We thus have a visual triangle to underline the love triangle in which the three characters are involved...
Philip Kraus is suitable as Sebastian, the twin brother Viola believes lost at sea. As in the two previous AST productions, the confusion of the two siblings is made more credible by having Kraus act somewhat effeminately--both twins thus being androgynous. In Shakespeare's day the problem naturally did not arise, since both roles were played by young boys, actresses being forbidden by law until the Rest oration...
...surface. Not only is she intent on a seven-year period of mourning for her brother, but she carries a black fan and even keeps her two sofas draped in black. In private she pops mints into her mouth from a pillbox. In her first meeting with Viola--Cesario she raises a smile by ticking off her virtues--lips, eyes, neck, chin--and then tucking her locket mirror into her bosom on the words "and so forth." She leaves no doubt that she is smitten by the young page since she whips the black drapes off her sofas when...
Martin Anderson plays the viola in a recital at Jacob Sleeper Hall, BU School for the Arts, 855 Comm. Ave., Boston...