Page 16 HIGH GEAR

Entertainm

Shakespeare Fest's

classy doings

By R. Woodward As this issue of HIGH GEAR appears (during the last week of August), The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival still has five weeks to go and avid Clevelandarea theater goers should be making an effort to catch any of this year's plays that they may have missed so far.

The Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival really needs your presence, not because of any financial difficulties or any shortage of patrons, but because the audiences there tend to be so dull.

Particularly heartbreaking was the opening of the festival's production of Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." The house was almost full, but seldom has one of the Twentieth Century's greatest plays, given such skillful direction and containing such superb performances, gotten so little from an audience.

This tragic-comedy, set in the civil war period of Ireland of the early 1920's, ought to have an audience filled with laughers and weepers. What it got was an audience filled with lumps of clay, and despite having just about everything going for it on the production end, it was not igniting as it should have.

The play deals with the various hassles faced by a family living in the slum area of Dublin. "Paycock" is how the local inhabitants pronounce "peacock," and the name of this strutting bird is applied to "Captain" Boyle by his wife Juno. A hard-drinking roustabout, Boyle always feels some illness coming on whenever a job is available. Boyle and his drinking buddy Joxer are very funny as long as you don't have to live with them.

Juno who does have to live with Boyle, and keep a family together besides, suffers but not siler tly. Boyle lives in fear of her sharp tongue.

Juno is surrounded by so much stupidity that the playgoer is glad to hear her complaints which are always aimed at the targets which most deserve them. While the men folk expound on heroism and its glories, neighbors are being killed right and left, and her own son Johnny, who has already lost an

arm from a bomb explosion lives

in fear of being hunted down. It is very difficult to act a leading role in a play and direct the play at the same time. Vincent Dowling, who plays the role of "Captain" Boyle, also directs the play and displays the surest of touches in both capacities. He keeps his own performance in balance with the rest of the production at all times, his performance as Boyle never dominating too much.

The performance of Aideen O'Kelly as Juno is a remarkable combination of passion, professionalism, and authenticity. An actress playing Juno cannot get by with flourishes or mannerisms. Juno is forceful and direct, at times unconsciously heroic. She is almost a personification of integrity. O'Kelly's Juno is always completely realized, never affected.

Along with O'Kelly's acting as Juno should be seen her acting as Madame Arcati in "Blithe Spirit" and her acting as Maria in "Twelfth Night." O'Kelly is a super-pro who lets the playgoer know that he is in good hands. She always seems to know exactly what is to be done with a role and always seems to have at her disposal the stamina and technique to do it with the greatest impact.

On opening night Holmes Osborne, who was playing Juno and Boyle's son, and Jody Catlin, who was playing their daughter, were not always sure of themselves with some of the local Irish phonemes. They both, however, look their parts perfectly and get across with complete conviction the emotions they are to express.

Bernard Kates as Boyles drinking buddy Joxer and Mary Kay Dean as Maisie Madigan, a sometimes obtrusive neighbor, are choice examples of actors looking and sounding totally authentic and getting all that is to be gotten out of supporting character parts. Kates gets an incredible number of laughs out of grinning and using the adjective "darlin'."

Dean is also not to be missed as Elvira in the festival's production of "Blithe Spirit." Playing the beautiful and frequently provocative ghost of the hero's first wife, she is saucy without thespic archness, and conveys Elvira's

naradavinal sant for living m..h

better than most actresses who try this role.

"Juno and the Paycock" is Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival's most exciting production so far this year ("Othello" opened after the printing deadline for this issue of HIGH GEAR), but all of the other productions are at least excellent.

Particularly underrated by local reviewers is the production of Booth Tarkington's "Clarence." This light comedy from 1919, dealing with a young man recently out of the army wno finds himself solving a family's various personal problems, provides fast smooth glide through a number of plot complications. The complications are so adroitly arranged that the playgoer is not quite sure how the playwright manages to get the characters either into them or out of them.

Keeping the story from seeming like mere slight of hand is the personal appeal of its chief character Clarence whose quaint manner reassures those around him. Human interestwise, the actor playing this part makes or breaks the play and John Q. Bruce as Clarence definitely makes it. He gets across all of Clarence's gawky charm with no hint of contrivance or strain. The cast of "Clarence" and Eberle Thomas, its director, are to be commended for the play's being delivered in a brisk, straightforward, non-condescending

manner.

wxt page i

Aideen O'Kelly is the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival's unforgettable Juno in its unforgettable production of Sean O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." See review.

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