Fans of GH were delighted by Genie Francis and Jeff Kober’s tense drama.
Going to jail while watching soap operas doesn’t mean leaving the canvas. As an illustration, consider the fact that Jeff Kober still plays Cyrus Renault on General Hospital, both in Pentonville and in dream sequences. In some recent episodes that took place in a setting that was both a prison and a fantasy sequence, he and Genie Francis, who played Laura Collins, killed.
Genie Francis and Jeff Kober – Performers of the Week
Cyrus lost consciousness after being attacked by a fellow prisoner and awoke in a strange but familiar environment—a prison cell. When he started to wonder where he was, he didn’t get the response he was hoping for. Cyrus reacted angrily, saying, “No, this isn’t real,” denying that he had switched one prison for another. Then Laura—or rather, a mental image of Laura—appeared. “You are not dreaming. Fantasy Laura cryptically told her half-brother, “You’re dying, Cyrus.
Fantasy Laura said, “You spent your whole life seeking your own way and using any methods necessary to get it. No matter how tenacious, strong, or ruthless you are, there are some things you can’t control. We are all ultimately mortal.
These scenes enabled Francis to bring a new dimension to her acting. She wasn’t playing Laura, the Mayor of Port Charles or the heart of GH, but rather she embodied Cyrus’s inner voice. She spoke the words that he wasn’t ready to hear until now.
Francis’s Laura has never held back from ripping into Cyrus, especially when he’s at his worst, but in these scenes, Francis brought less anger and more logic to her approach to Laura’s sibling. The director wisely opted to have fantasy Laura appear seamlessly on the outside of Cyrus’s cage and then, she’d be inches from his ear so she could calmly get her point across to him. Sometimes not yelling at the other person in the scene is even more effective than blasting him or her. Francis, a Daytime Emmy winner for playing Laura, always makes acting choices that make her performances compelling and captivating.
The writers threw viewers a curve ball after nefarious Cyrus found religion behind bars. It’d be easy to say that it’s an act. Cyrus is pulling a fast one until he can plan his escape — or is he? We saw in these scenes that Cyrus can’t lie to us or himself when he’s on an ethereal plane.
For giving his otherwise terrible persona some humanity, Jeff Kober won a Daytime Emmy the previous year. But he was given an even bigger stage to reveal more of his persona in these out-of-body experience moments. Cyrus once more chose life over death and opened his eyes with the aid of imagination Laura.
Laura is currently searching for Nikolas (Adam Huss) from abroad, while Cyrus is a prisoner at Pentonville. But there is hope where there is life! In these memorable scenes, Genie Francis and Jeff Kober served as a reminder of their excellent on-screen connection. There is undoubtedly more to Laura and Cyrus’s story, and we eagerly await the publication of their next chapter.