Word: zorba
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...other people on stage stomp their feet in time and join in the song. There is no set on the stage and no subtlety in the musical number: the man whose story we are going to see is a man possessed by the most basic of passions. But Zorba is only one man and not at the center of Prince's show; his passions...
Luckily Prince has found the right actor to voice the spectrum of human emotions so crucial to Zorba. His name is Herschel Bernardi and I can't get him out of my mind. For Zorba, every minute of life must be lived as if death were around the corner, with no time to be wasted. Raising his eyes to the Crete sky, spreading open his arms, and kicking out his feet as if he could surely ascend to heaven if he worked enough at it, Bernardi makes not only a stunning Zorba but a majestic spectacle of human will...
...This is the first time in Miss Karnilova's career (which includes performances varied as a stripper in Gypsy and Tevye's wife in Fiddler on the Roof) that we see enough of her to leave the theatre satisfied. As Hortense, the French lady on the hill who lets Zorba share her bed, she becomes a vision of lonely fortitude in the face of life's injustice. In one scene, during a song that tells of the "pretty admirals" who kept company with her in the distant past, she breaks into a dance she says she did when she worked...
...that matter, John Cunningham, playing the young intellectual who hires Zorba to run the mine he has inherited, does little to suggest that he is Greek (which in this version, unlike the film, he is). But like Miss Karnilova, he compensates handily. As Niko, the man Zorba teaches how to live, Cunningham works hard to make his characterization more than the dull stiff it easily could be. He is, of course, helped out by the writing. Joseph Stein, the author of the show's book, establishes Niko quickly in the second scene and never allows him to fade from view...
...strength in the acting, it is Prince's staging that dominates Zorba. I am convinced that this man knows more about building a musical scene than anyone else around. In this show he has chosen to frame the action with music, so that at times one is hardly conscious songs are beginning and ending. For this purpose he keeps a chorus of sorts on stage nearly the whole time. The singers and dancers drift in and out of the action or often just sit on the high platforms that are a permanent fixture upstage. Leading this group is Lorraine Serabian...