Word: gitter
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...Dean Gitter wonderful as Death. Grinning impersonally, asleep, or reminiscing about the good old days of the Great Plague, Gitter's creation is compelling and convincingly pragmatic. Jones as Everyman holds the center of attention firmly, but much of the first act could be played with less method intensity, more of the light farce Mayer is wont to introduce on occasion. Last night, Iver's tightly-knit band, his stylized compositions and arrangements, and extraordinary singer George Leh, came as close to stealing a show as anybody comes working with Mayer...
Costumed with successful eclecticism by Sarah Gates and played on Howard Cutler's elegant and functional set, all the cameras, flashlights, modern tunes, and anachronistic props, however funny, cannot take the show away from its brilliant and dedicated cast. Dean Gitter's fascinating Bottom remains the most difficult performance to fathom: his "wit" in the scenes with Titania almost passes for just that, and his death scene as Pyramus reveals Bottom, unbelievably, a capable actor--capable at least of temporarily affecting Theseus and Hippolyta, played superbly by Tommy Lee Jones and Lynette Saxe...
...cast, by the by, is worth the price of admission in itself. I will term Thomas Babe a gifted mimic, Susan Channing an actress of tremendous range, Dean Gitter the possessor of one of the most authoratitive stage presences about, Tommy Lee Jones an actor with a true gift for insightful readings, Stephen Kaplan a protean comic figure, and Marilyn Pitzele a remarkable dramatic and comic singer. Each term will fit the rest of the cast as well, and as may well be imagined, the permutations are incredible. I leave you to work out the details...
Equally fine is Frances Gitter as his mother Volumnia, giving the most articulate and intelligent performance in a generally excellent cast. Frank Hartenstein's lighting added more to characterization than one dares hope for at the Loeb: a scene between Coriolanus and six others on a balcony proved remarkable in that only Coriolanus's shadow was projected onto the stage floor fifteen feet below, serving to isolate him completely from the other more reasonable characters...
...Dean Gitter as Jay Gould gives Prince Erie's most extraordinary performance. A quiet nervous deadpan conveys the tension and ruthlessness of Gould, who could "smell a nickel under twenty pounds of lard." Through disciplined underplaying, Gitter is tragic in the steamboat scene, and satanic at the end of the second act where, after the success of the gold crash, he drinks a glass of champagne in spine-chilling slow motion...