“Bishop Nikolas Arnesson”                    – 1978/79

Review Excerpts

“’GUTHRIE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BOUNDS INTO JOB WITH COMPLEX IBSEN PLAY’…. Lurking on the fringes is one of Ibsen’s most fascinating characters, Bishop Nikolas, a twisted man who plots to keep the two forever enemies and thus forever incapable of absolutely ruling the budding nation…. Randall Duk Kim is… masterly as the bishop, an ironic and oily but strangely comic villain, a manic clown of discord. Kim is splendid on his deathbed in the play’s best scene, worrying about his mortal soul as he plots his devious immortality through perpetual conflict.”
               –Mike Steele, MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE (6/2/1978) 

“’FATIGUING PLAY GETS GUTHRIE OFF TO LIVELY START’….THE SHOW-STOPPER is Randall Duk Kim (a Guthrie newcomer scheduled to play Hamlet later in the season) as the deliciously devious Bishop of Oslo. The bishop adroitly hustles all claimants to the throne with ingratiating lies and fairly gleams with senile satisfaction as they gobble his tempting bait…. Kim’s magnificent scoundrel has a magnificently impious and funny death-bed scene, fretting about his scroungy soul while conniving up to his final breath.”
               –Don Morrison, THE MINNEAPOLIS STAR (6/2/1978)

“Finally, there is Bishop Nicholas…. Randall Duc Kim as Bishop Nicholas…. is a wonderful combination of Marlowe’s Faust and Machiavelli’s Prince, and Kim’s strong portrayal signals the arrival of a major new actor at the Guthrie. As nasty as Nicholas is buzzing around the perimeters of power—dropping a malicious hint here, sending a damaging letter there—Kim is able to bring out the much needed comic elements in this character as well. Bishop Nicholas’s death bed scene, as played by Kim, is a perfect marriage of dark and light.”
               –Robert H. Collins, MINNESOTA DAILY (6/16/1978)

“…A gleefully corrupt old bishop (Randall Duk Kim) influences Skule to overthrow Haakon, then dies, leaving Skule to fight both the King and his own self-doubt…. Skule’s tragic presence takes the play in Shakespearean directions, but the Bishop Nikolas, the self-appointed political meddler, modernizes and humanizes it. Kim has some excellent scenes in which he converts Skule to his amoral philosophy. In a suspenseful, sardonically funny deathbed scene, he goes right on playing political games up to the last moment, then finally does redirect history with a single demonic act. It’s a sharp, wickedly effective performance.”
               –Catherine Taylor, T.C. READER (6/9/1978)

“…KEEPING THE two pretenders and their factions in constant suspicion, tension and rivalry is the amoral, old bishop of Oslo, Nikolas, whose motive (he confesses on his deathbed) stems from his feeling that if he can’t rule Norway, no one will. …IT is in the lines and part of the complex Bishop Nikolas that we finally find glowing and palpable substance and motivation (however perverse the latter). Randall Duk Kim is, simply put, nothing short of brilliant and astonishing, for the way he makes this both loveable and spiteful old eunuch of a cleric live and breathe, and finally, die, cheating his enemies, his fate, and even Mother Church.”
               –Robert L. Girouard, THE FREE PRESS, MANKATO (6/8/1978)

“’IBSEN GETS 150TH BIRTHDAY PRESENT’….THE CAST, including a number of newcomers, is a strong one. Heading it is Ken Ruta, giving the finest performance of his career…. Another superb performance is that of Randall Duk Kim in the role of the cynically amoral bishop playing his own manipulative power game. These two alone are worth the entire show.”
               –John H. Harvey, ST. PAUL DISPATCH (6/2/1978)

“’DAZZLING DEMON; CRASHING BORE’….Most promising of the lot, though, is Randall Duk Kim, who plays the crafty, malicious bishop with brilliant timing and sardonic comedy.”
               –Joan Bunke, DES MOINES SUNDAY REGISTER (6/11/1978)

“’WHILE IBSEN BLATHERS, THE DEMON SPEAKS’….Randall Duk Kim is splendid as Bishop Nikolas, a powerful figure working behind the scenes to keep the pretenders at sword’s point. Kim is almost worth the price of admission himself, especially in the very rich deathbed scene at the end of the first act. When he departs, unfortunately, the bottom falls out of the play.”
               –Jerr Boschee, TWIN CITIES (July/August 1978)

“…The church, represented by Archbishop Nikolas Arnesson, plays its part in fomenting civil war. In the Archbishop Ibsen has a character who brings out the unsavory and manipulative role of the church in Norway’s politics. He is a true, unadulterated villain, and the audience loved him. The death-bed scene in which the old schemer plots to leave a legacy of as much evil, uncertainty and division as possible, is the funniest in the play. Randall Duk Kim, who played this admirer of the devil with considerable relish, was rewarded with spontaneous applause on several occasions.”
               –Grace Gibas, CIRCULATING PINES (6/29/1978)

“’TWO WINNERS OPEN GUTHRIE SEASON’….One new standout is Randall Duk Kim, who in this play steals the show as the Bishop of Oslo. He also steals the show, almost, in the second play offered by the Guthrie this season—‘Teibele And Her Demon’.”
               –James Crawford, SUN NEWSPAPER (6/9/1978) 

“…Pomp steals the show, and setting, costumes and lights lead the way. They are outdone only by the performance of Randall Duk Kim as Bishop Nikolas Arnesson…. Kim lives the role of the Bishop. His speech is halting, haunted with age. His walk and posture are housed in a rigidly hunched frame, his gestures touched with unsteadiness. Duk Kim’s characterization, animated in its aged frailness, is enlivened by make-up realistically aging him 40 or more years….”
               –Kathy Janich, SPECTATOR, U OF W—EAU CLAIRE (9/7/1978) 

“’IBSEN’S ‘PRETENDERS’: IMPORTANT PREMIERE’….Provoking the endless conflict between Haakon an Skule was the strange, compelling Bishop Nicholas, who, unable to fulfill his thirst for power in bed or on the battlefield, turned to the church for a means to manipulate and conquer. This he did with almost Mephistopholean glee. …Kim—who also plays the title role in ‘Hamlet’—is a marvelously funny incarnation of pure maliciousness as the bishop: he makes his character the kind of villain you love to hate, but one, against your will, you find yourself admiring as well, in a strange way.”
               –Bernard Weiner, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE (9/1/1978) 

“…. Randall Duk Kim’s performance in the role is the delight of the production. Mr. Kim, an American actor of Korean descent, is young, but he has used dedication and every artifice of his craft to become pure age. Life has withdrawn into his eyes, and glitters there. He is a husk, a tatter of a man, about to blow away but resisting death not because it ends living but because it ends power. His deathbed scene is fierce and funny; he lies there, frail head propped on the pillow like a whiskered egg, inciting Skule and making sure that the choir of monks praying for him is sticking to the job.”
               –Richard Eder, NEW YORK TIMES (7/24/1978)

“’GUTHRIE AT 15’…. Epstein gets a fine ensemble performance from the Guthrie company, but Randall Duk Kim gives him something more as Nikolas, the sinful, satanic old bishop. In one of the greatest death scenes in all drama (‘I am a budding corpse,’ says Nikolas), the bishop, a sated old spider hanging by his last moldering thread, states Ibsen’s theme with an ambiguity both terrifying and comic: ‘I’m in a state of innocence. I don’t know the difference between good and evil’.”
               –Jack Kroll, NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE (6/19/1978)