Word: isabella
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Should the 77-year-old strongman die or become incapacitated during his four-year term, it was agreed, Isabelita would also resign immediately and new elections would be called to preclude a monarchy-like succession en familia. If and when Isabella's own presidential candidacy becomes an issue, however, the Vice President's detractors may well find themselves facing an opponent too powerful to be dislodged...
...play's major interest attaches to Pinchwife and his young bride Margery. Wycherley, who was educated in France, modeled the pair on characters in Moliere's School for Husbands and School for Wives; the jealous and overprotective Pinchwife corresponds to Sganarelle and Arnolphe, the outwitting Margery to Isabella and Agnes. Jack Gwillim's gray-bearded Pinchwife is all gruff and grum, but the part is a stock two-dimensional character that admits of little variety...
...Isabella is often viewed as a sympathetic, saintly heroine, but I find her preposterous and unappealing. One should recall that, in Shakespeare's time, an official betrothal was considered legally binding. But it is hard to accept Isabella's willingness to see her brother executed for seducing his unofficial fiancee while condoning the prenuptial coition of Angelo and his former betrothed. Surely a novice in one of the most strict Catholic orders would share the Church's position against consummation before the marriage ceremony. And how does one square her extreme statement that "More than our brother is our chastity...
...pants down: he is just about the only believable person in the play. Shakespeare was remiss in giving him only a couple of lines in the second half of the work, and, when he finally turns up alive after being reported dead, in having him and his sister Isabella say nary a word to each other. In the present production, however, this is just as well. Richard Backus '67, who was so fine recently in the Harvard Summer School Repertory troupe's Ah. Wilderness! and in Promenade All! on Broadway, shows himself totally unsuited--as yet--for classical acting...
...behind two pairs of stairs leading to a platform. Ingeniously hidden panels of prison bars quickly move into place for the jail scenes. Jane Greenwood, back for her seventh season, has worked up first-rate costumes, with two exceptions. The nuns of the Order of Saint Clare, to which Isabella aspires, are dressed in black habits, when they were particularly known for wearing white. I don't object to Isabella's wearing light blue, since she is still a novice; but her habit, covered with what seem to be dark smudges, is unbelievably ugly, and suggests that she has been...