Word: gitter
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With the exception of Frances Gitter's performance of Mary, the actors did not play these moments of contrast, or at best glossed over them. Carl Nagin does Edmund as the traditional Sensitive Young Man. His bitterness is searing, but his tenderness is embarrassed and whispered. Daniel Seltzer as James has much the same problem. He vehemently attacks his lines until the effect is dulled the same way listening to a jackhammer for three hours induces deafness. It is only in the play's magnificent last act when Edmund and James are both drunk that Nagin and Seltzer managed...
...Miss Gitter alone fully brings out the momentary glimpses at the depths in her character. Her shifts between excuse and denial of re-starting her dope habit again, or between attacks on James' drinking and a quiet pride in his love are done quickly and smoothly. Her final monolog, in which her mind has floated back to her girlhood at the convent has more power than any of the masculine tirades...
...troupe, my favorites after Mrs. Channing were Johanna Madden (Mrs. Peachum), Jane Gratwick (Polly), Virginia Manack (Lucy), and William Hodes in the relatively minor part of Crookfinger Jake. It may be, however, that I was less impressed by Dean Gitter (Macheath) because he never gave me any reason to worry about him. He was obviously in command whenever he was on stage, and with a weaker actor in the part, the play would have limped. I didn't tune in on Arthur Friedman (Peachum) until the last act, and if I saw the play again, I'd probably like...
...this only be testimony to the mastery of Gitter's performance. The role of Barabas comprises nearly half of the play's lines, and Gitter carries the weight superbly. Slightly hunched, his mustache twitching with delight at his guile, Gitter simply oozes charm, duplicity and cunning. At the prospect of murder, his eyebrows wiggle and his voice rises to an ecstatic pitch. He combines the avariciousness of a Jewish pawn-shop broker with the greasiness of a Carmine DeSapio...
...rest of the cast, as well as Schmidt's direction and David Levine's lighting, is equally as deft. David Rittenhouse, playing Ferneze, the Governor of Malta, and Francis Gitter as the Jew's daughter, display a remarkable intensity in their more straight-forward roles. Charles Degelman, who plays the scheming Turkish slave Ithamore, could have looked evil just by raising his eyebrows and shifting his huge jaw into a sneer. Only Neal Johnston as Pilia-borza seemed amateurish, but that was as much due to his Ralph Guglielmi accent as to his performance...