Word: bendheim
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...cardboard villain, right out of The Perils of Pauline. He clenches his teeth, he points accusingly, he leans over chairs menacingly, he rubs his palms in sadistic glee. If he had a moustache, he'd sure to twirl it with fiendish rigor. As Kristine, his long lost love, Kim Bendheim seems vaguely robotized. Their climactic scene together is a wet firecracker...
...only performer who seems ill at east with the restrictions of this production is Kim Bendheim in the title role. Bendheim tries for something more than a one-dimensional characterization. Her Duchess is a skittish teenager, determined to do just as she pleases. She falls in love with her steward, contracting a secret marriage with him, and that mesalliance causes her downfall. Yet Bendheim does not make the Duchess a giddy and thoughtless girl. Though young, the Duchess is nevertheless a great aristocrat, fully aware of the responsibilities of her social position and of the danger in which her marriage...
Attempting to be both proud and passionate, Bendheim has a difficult task. In her emphasis on the Duchess' youthful audacity, she stumbles over long sentences and leaves us unsure this reckless girl could deceive her cunning brother for even a little while. In the second half of the play, when the Duchess' pride sustains her through her misfortunes, Bendheim occasionally slips into facile arrogance, leaving the Duchess' anguish only hinted at. But these are momentary lapses in what remains a rewarding performance. Bendheim's characterization, while not wholly realized, is subtler and more human than the effective but confined performances...
...nightmare, The Duchess of Malfi loses coherence and power. Though Shiels and Raymond have taken great liberties with the play--the plot is so tightly constructed that it survives. Horror after horror piles up and our interest never flags. Nevertheless, we don't believe in what happens. Bendheim's is the only performance approaching credibility. By removing The Duchess of Malfi from a gossip-ridden palace and situating it in the dark recesses of the mind, Shiels and Raymond have made the tragedy more ghastly, the villains more sinister, but both less convincing. The directors have reduced Webster's tragedy...
...ONLY PERFORMANCE that approaches Clemenson's is Grace Shobet's courageous Paulina, and the scenes between Shohet and Clemenson are the best in the play. Shohet outshines Kim Bendheim (Hermione), who is distractingly nervous in the opening scene but rallies to embody virtue, as Shakespeare intended. Bendheim is particularly strong in her trial scene, where Redford's blocking is also at its best--simply but effectively showing the relative virtues of the characters. Hermione stands on a small box above all her accusers; with their backs to the audience...
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