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- <text id=92TT0217>
- <title>
- Jan. 27, 1992: View Points:Theater
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Jan. 27, 1992 Is Bill Clinton For Real?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 67
- THEATER
- Double, Double
- </hdr><body>
- <p> The idea that rivalry between British and American Macbeths
- could stir their New York City partisans to murderous riot
- seems almost unimaginably quaint. But in his witty and poignant
- evocation of the madness of 1849, Two Shakespearean Actors,
- playwright Richard Nelson slyly suggests parallels to our era's
- battles over supposed Eurocentric cultural imperialism. The
- play's underlying debate: Is art universal, or does it belong
- exclusively to its nation of origin? Nelson touches on these
- matters in glittering moments rather than digging in with
- Shavian relentlessness. He focuses on three actors: William
- Charles Macready (Brian Bedford), the English Macbeth, a man
- with no life save work and drinking; Edwin Forrest (Victor
- Garber), the American Macbeth, a compulsive seducer; and John
- Ryder (Zeljko Ivanek), dogsbody to Macready and fill-in Macduff
- for Forrest, who comes alive only when being someone else. All
- three are splendid, as is Jack O'Brien's staging of the Broadway
- season's first substantial new American play.
- </p>
- <p>By William A. Henry III
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-