Word: actorly
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...cast can do The Rivals justice, the Equity Players do it?almost. Mary Shaw as Mrs. Malaprop plucks her juicy verbiage with consummate taste. James T. Powers as David corners the greatest single contribution of laughter and applause?enough to make a dozen Broadway successes. But what one actor has a chance to shine pre-eminently in such a congeries of stars: Maclyn Arbuckle, McKay Morris, Francis Wilson, J. M. Kerrigan, John Craig, Violet Heming, Eva Le Galliene, Vivian Tobin! The only weakness in the cast is Sidney Blackmer as Captain Absolute?too modest at his intrigue. Magnificent acting...
...Nastya are but parts in a large and wonderful cast. In the American theatre and even in the Yiddish Art Theatre, the tendency was to make them focal, to play for the star. A perfect cast in almost every case was that of Saturday afternoon. Ivan Lasareff as the actor, Giorgi Burdzhaloff as Kostilyoff, Vera Pashennaya as his wife, and Nina Litovtseva as Anna created unforgetably fine characterizations. The Pepel of Peter Baksheieff, while it was exceptional in its way, seemed out of tune with the playing of the rest of the company...
...American debut in the middle of the season. Bohnen is that exceptional phenomenon among singers, a man of high intelligence and culture. He is distinctly a man of parts. His voice is fine, big, fresh and young. He sings with skill and excellent understanding and is really a masterful actor, and, indeed, has a reputation in Germany as a nonsinging and even nonspeaking actor. He has had much experience and success as a player for the motion pictures. He is, too, an athlete, a tremendously strong fellow, one of the best amateur wrestlers in Germany and a boxer...
...Stanislavsky was outstanding, as was the Boris of Yershoff. Disappointment came in the Tsar as played by Katchaloff. There was no pitiable quality of his weakness, the emphasis seemed almost to go on the comic aspects of his futility. That was the tendency until the last act, when the actor held his audience spell-bound with sympathy. Then, too, the Tsarina of Madame Pashennaya did not have the plasticity that Madame Tchekhova could have brought to it. The remarkable thing about the Moscow Art Theatre Company is that the minor characters as well as the principals stand out as finely...
Equally amazing as some of the individual acting, if not more so, is the group or ensemble work of the company as a whole. In the crowded stage scenes each actor seems to be part of a subtly arranged picture, without any consciousness of posing to form a picture. There is no mere attitudinizing for effect. Hands, arms and legs, the curve of the bodies seem to flow naturally from position to position, working out on the stage fine effects of composition, corresponding to the mood of the play at the moment. From grouping to grouping the actors move...