Word: tusenbach
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Laboring under the burden of a broken toe, Bellucci nevertheless is eloquent and convincing, especially in the beautifully acted love scenes with Masha. Chris Clemenson takes the awkward character of Tusenbach and fills it out with sympathy and skill. Tusenbach's paeans to labor can easily turn into sermonizing and his devotion to Irina into sickening self-abasement, but Clemenson doesn't self-dramatize the role. He transcends the limiting qualities of the part as Chekhov wrote it to create to subtle portrait of human suffering, weltschmerz...
Olga and Masha urge Irina to accept a proposal of marriage from an oddly self-mocking anti-hero named Baron Tusenbach (Austin Pendleton). Though Irina does not love him, she does deeply respect him and reluctantly agrees. But Irina is besieged by another suitor, a man as menacing as a bayonet thrust, Staff Captain Solyony (Rene Au-berjonois), who is romantically desperate for her love. Solyony challenges the baron to a duel, and all dreams end with a pistol shot...
...young baron Tusenbach, the lieutenant who wins Irina's hand only to be shot in a duel, Brain Bedford performs with great skill--to the extent to actually playing on the piano the middle section of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu. His glasses, moustache, and long hair parted squarely in the center help make him properly homely. There is an extraordinary amount of traffic in this play--entrances and exists, greeting and farewells. One of the most moving farewells in all drama is the parting of Irina and Tusenbach in Act IV--a fine example of Chekhov's oblique method...
Irina's other suitor is the captain, Solyony, who kills Tusenbach in the duel. He is a strange man, and throughout the play keeps putting scent on his hands to get rid of their smell of death--like some sort of male Lady Macbeth. Right from the first act, Charles Cioffi's portrayal is a remarkable piece of acting. Solyony speaks scarcely a half dozen times in all of Act I, and spends most of the time sitting silently on a chair in the corner. Nevertheless, Cioffi tells us a great deal about this morose and mysterious character. We notice...
...Masha who carries on an adulterous and eventually doomed love affair, turns in a mature and persuasive performance. Not only does she know how to use her voice, but what is more important she catches the rhythm of Masha's speeches and shows how the woman suffers. As Baron Tusenbach, Thomas Teal shows himself as accomplished a technician as Miss Blanchard, and projects a wholly appropriate mixture of agony and nobility...
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