Peggy Ashcroft Holt in "Edward, My Son", in the West End and then on Broadway, and the downtrodden Catherine Sloper in "The Heiress" in 1949. Ashcroft began the 1950s with a return to Shakespeare, at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, playing Beatrice to Gielgud's Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing" and Cordelia to his King Lear. In 1951 she returned to the Old Vic, playing Viola in "Twelfth Night", the title role in "Electra" and Mistress Page in "The Merry Wives of Windsor". In the second of these, according to Billington, "she scaled the austere peaks of Greek tragedy". Through the rest
Much Apu About Nothing succeeds as a savage satire on the scapegoating of immigrants. Homer has never been so frighteningly dumb, although he does come through with a rousing liberal speech." The episode is "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening's third favorite episode of the show. The episode received a negative review from Dave Foster of DVD Times. He considered "Much Apu About Nothing" to be one of the season's most "tiring" episodes, "mostly because Apu is not a strong enough character to focus an episode on no matter how much writer David Cohen develops him". Foster commented that the episode deals with a political