Word: zanged
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...theatrical problem of St. Joan is an immense credibility gap. At the heart of the play is a simple country maid who hears what she believes to be divine voices. Are they heavenly or hallucinatory? She secures access to France's Dauphin (Edward Zang) and convinces him of her inspired mission to raise his nation from the mire of defeat and British occupation. She dons a soldier's garb, leads the army to lift the siege at Orléans, and then crowns the Dauphin King in Rheims Cathedral...
...acting, too, is generally skillful, but occasionally overdone. Edward Zang's cynical Scandal is always restrained yet his open disdain for the slithery lawyer Buckram (Bernard Wurger) is still as funny as anything in the show. Wurger himself smoothly handles a three minute conversation from a blackhatted Puritan lawyer to a shyly drunk self-acknowledged stud. Gerald McGonagill as the addled astrologer Foresight, when calm, is also entertaining...
Congreve's play is hardy, and sporadic overplaying doesn't do it too much damage. But a director should have a little more faith in his playwright. The words of Congreve's comedy can carry themselves and often should. Only Mr. Zang and Mr. Keating as Valentine are consistently sensitive to the proper amount of playing a line demands...
...cast gives a uniformly excellent, if wasted, performance, and Barbara is almost worth seeing just for some of the fine acting in it. Lucy Martin plays a believably inspired Barbara with clarity and humor, but most of all with sincere devotion to her work in the Salvation Army. Edward Zang plays an Adolphus Cusins actively in love with both Greek and Barbara, and as the scholar-lover he possesses a fine sense of Shavian wit. Terrence Currier as Snobby Price, the hypocritically reformed worker, and Lawrence Pressman as Bill Walker, the unreformed bully, skillfully carry their roles...