Howard Miller takes a look at Farinelli and the King:
"Musick has charms to sooth a savage breast," wrote William Congreve in 1697. That aphorism is put to the test in Claire van Kampen's Farinelli and the King, opening tonight at the Belasco Theatre. It is a play that takes place not long after Congreve penned those words, whose meaty central role of a bipolar 18th century monarch is ideally suited to the outsize personality of its star, Mark Rylance, who happens to be the playwright's husband. . . . |
