Local Drama Sparks Summer Season

The year 1959 provided serious theatregoers in the Boston area with a good deal of summer dramatic fare. The season was the most active since 1956; and if, on the whole, it did not quite match in quality the level of 1957, the highest within memory, it still offered plenty of things to be especially thankful for.

The burnt of the burden fell on four institutions: the Cambridge Drama Festival in the new Metropolitan Boston Arts Center Theatre; the Group 20 Players in Wellesley's Theatre-on-the-Green; the Boston Summer Playhouse in the Charles Playhouse on Boston's Warrenton Street; and the Tufts Arena Theatre on the Tufts campus in Medford. In addition, Harvard itself was the site of one production, staged by a group of energetic students; and M.I.T. presented a one-man theatrical evening.

Most newsworthy was the inaugural season of the MeBAC Theatre across the Charles River in Brighton. The structure is the first State-constructed theatre in the country and the first professional theatre to be built in the Boston area since 1925. The actual erecting began on May 7. Bad weather and a series of mishaps threatened to make the July 9 opening impossible. At 7:30 p.m. on July 9 steamrollers and stake-drivers were still working. But at 8 o'clock Governor Furcolo was able to officiate at the impressive ribbon-cutting ceremony, backed by the firing of cannon and the blaring of medieval trumpets.

The Theatre itself is circular; and its pioneering design includes a titled, inflated, lens-shaped nylon roof 145 feet in diameter. With a maximum seating capacity of about 1800, the Theatre has a stage flexible enough to accommodate either proscenium or three-quarters-arena productions.

Cambridge Drama Festival

For the first season the Metropolitan District Commission ceded the use of the new Theatre to the Cambridge Drama Festival, which offered three productions over a period of nine and a half weeks. As it turned out--and quite accidentally--all three were by Shakespeare. Fortunately, Jacques Barzun's recent statement, "I agree with that small but articulate group of people who would rather not see Shakespeare acted"--shocking for a man of his staggering brilliance and perception--fell on deaf ears.

In choosing the first show, the C.D.F. naturally wanted a festive work of acknowledged merit. It settled on Twelfth Night and engaged the imaginative Herbert Berghof as director. Berghof, in keeping with the festive occasion, decided to turn the play into a "music and dance extravaganza." He employed as much music as possible, composed or arranged in neo-Elizabethan style by Andre Singer. He interpreted Malvolio's phrase, "the fool's zanies," as "the Fool's zanies," and created two new characters--a singing zany and a dancing zany--to accompany Feste the Fool. He also did some textual pruning and excised completely the taunting of Malvolio in prison, thereby deliberately upsetting the delicately balanced construction of this last and subtlest of the Bard's true comedies.

Even those who decried Berghof's liberties had to admit that the resulting show was exuberantly entertaining and contained several brilliantly staged elaborations. Siobhan McKenna's Viola was a gem. As the play's one honest, sincere, and normal person, who must spend most of the time abnormally disguised as a young boy, Miss McKenna conveyed a zestful boyishness without ever losing her innate womanliness; and she paid more attention than anyone else to the poetic qualities of the text.

Tammy Grimes was a perfect Maria. Skedaddling about with devastating infectiousness, Miss Grimes made it clear that Maria's wits were as sharp as her own nose and chin. The other two superlative performances were the Dancing Zany of Geoffrey Holder, who designed the choreography and also sang; and the light-footed Singing Zany of Russell Oberlin, the world's finest countertenor. In other major roles, Fritz Weaver's Malvolio, Zachary Scott's Orsino, and George Mathews' Sir Toby were disappointing.

'Macbeth'

Retaining Miss McKenna as a star, the C.D.F. next offered Macbeth. For the title role, it played a long shot by engaging Jason Robards, Jr. and lost. Although Robards' performances in 20th-century American works have been unbeatable, he proved himself as yet vocally unequipped to cope with the demands of Shakespearean language. He conveyed much through his face and eyes; and his delivery of some short, forceful phrases was admirable. But the longer speeches tripped him up; he could not convey the sense, the rhythm, and the grandeur. He breathed improperly, so that he often had to pause at the end of a line when the thought demanded that he go right on to the next.

In his first Shakespearean assignment, director Jose Quintero made some miscalculations; but some of his staging was ingenious and effective, such as the scenes involving the spine-chilling trio of Weird Sisters. The show was visually gripping; and much of the credit must go to the lighting of David Hays '52, which was as inspired as I have seen in a long time.

Miss McKenna's Lady Macbeth was a remarkable and consistent performance. She made it clear that she did not covet the crown just for her own sake but wanted her husband to be king at any cost because she was so much in love with him. Her tricky deportment at the banquet and her exit therefrom were wonderfully handled.

The traversal of the sleepwalking scene proved to be highly controversial. Miss McKenna injected a lot of agitation into it and pitched it high--an approach that drew the fire of some of the critics in the daily press. These evidently conceive of somnambulism as always graceful, and of somniloquy as exclusively a lyrical, if not whispered nocturne. This is, to be sure, the customary way of doing the scene; but Miss McKenna's way was valid and convincing, too. Her critics should have remembered that one can do violent things in one's sleep; and that Lady Macbeth's mind has disintegrated and is tormented by a jagged and distorted patchwork of horrible thoughts, echoes, and memories. Yes, Miss McKenna knew what she was doing. And with this addition to her long roster of great portrayals she clearly had earned the right to the title of the world's first lady of the theatre.

'Much Ado About Nothing'

The final offering of the C.D.F. was Much Ado About Nothing, with Sir John Gielgud as both Benedick and director. Gielgud gave us a clean, crisp, meticulous production, beautifully and symmetrically staged in keeping with the symmetrical, Renaissance style of the play. Having played Benedick off and on for 28 years, he gave a performance that was marvelously nuanced. Still, as he himself has admitted, he is not an ideal Benedick. The part demands more brio than he has inside him to give. He plays the clarinet when he should be blowing a trumpet. Yet he was careful to choose a Beatrice that would properly balance the see-saw, in this case Margaret Leighton.

George Rose's booming and Falstaffian Dogberry was definitive. Hurd Hatfield was perfectly cast as the villainous Don John, and Micheal MacLiammoir was a laudable Don Pedro. In several of the other roles, especially female, the performers were not up to Gielgud's demands.

Having forsworn the part of Hamlet a few years ago, Gielgud now says he will not play Benedick again after this production finishes its present run on Broadway. When someone objected, he replied, "I'll always be left with Lear and Prospero."

This C.D.F. season must, on the whole, be written down as a commendable success, far in excess of what could legitimately have been expected in such a short time and under such unpredictable circumstances. William Morris Hunt '36, the C.D.F.'s Executive Producer, has announced that 80,000 persons attended the summer's offerings. The major remaining problem for the new Theatre is its acoustics. During the summer several amplification arrangements were tried; the one used for Much Ado, the sole proscenium production, turned out to be the best. But the acoustics are still not wholly satisfactory; perhaps the solution demands a concave roof and solid, airtight walls.

Group 20 Players

The Group 20 Players had a particularly fine season--their seventh--with only one lapse out of a schedule of five plays. By coincidence they opened with the same work as the C.D.F.'s finale: Much Ado. It was directed by Ellis Rabb, who joined the company for the first time. Rabb is one of the finest Shakespearean actors anywhere; though still very young, he is one of a handful who can boast of having acted in all thirty-seven of the Bard's plays. He provided a warm, even-keeled production on William D. Roberts' stunning, three-story set, complete with lanterns and garden swing. As Beatrice and Benedick, Rosemary Harris and Barry Morse made a strong pair of unwilling lovers, spitting out their wit with clarity and verve. They were less reliable than their C.D.F. counterparts, but at times surpassed the Gielgud-Leighton team. (Alfred Drake still remains the best Benedick this country has seen in years.) Some of the supporting men were poor, but the women were better than Gielgud's.

A Streetcar Named Desire, the better of Tennessee Williams' two great plays, forced director Rabb out of the realm where he belongs. Determined to find a "new" interpretation, Rabb supplied a long program note full of fuzzy theorizing and such ideas as: "Awe is antithetical to pity. Pity is indecisive; in awe there is no escape." In stripping Blanche DuBois of her nobility and routing out all traces of pity for her, Rabb distorted the play out of all proportion. As Blanche, Cavada Humphrey fought a losing battle, and was the only cast member even to attempt mastering a Southern accent. Robert Blackburn's Stanley was not animalistic enough, but Chase Crosley made him a sweet wife. The best part of the production was the set, with its half dozen gaudy, flashing neon signs.

Jerome T. Kilty '49 returned to Wellesley to direct and star in his adaptation of Shaw's Man and Superman, which drama critic Elliot Norton '26 has called "the greatest comedy of the 20th century." An uncut performance would last eight hours, and most directors simply throw out the lengthy "Don Juan in Hell" interlude, which is the most brilliant four-way conversation ever written. Kilty's skillful blue-penciling enabled him to retain about an hour of the Hell scene, which makes the last act more meaningful since it refers to the infernal dialogue specifically.

Barry Morse, who is regarded as Canada's leading actor, gave a sparklingly burnished performance as Jack TannerDon Juan, and Rosemary Harris was his delightful pursuer and ensnarer. Kilty was fine in the double role of the brigand Mendoza and the Devil. His production constituted the high point of the Weslesley season, as it had two years previously.

The company then offered, under Basil Langton's direction, a 55th anniversary production of Sir James Barrie's classic fable for both children and adults, Peter Pan. As Peter, who has from Maude Adams to the present always been played for some reason by a woman, Miss Harris was captivatingly pixyish. Eric Portman might have brought more bravado to the traditional double role of the Father and Captain Hook. Ellis Rabb provided an unbeatably riotous Smee, an elaboration of the Starveling he did in Midsummer Night's Dream at Stratford a year ago. The production employed the original music of John Crooke, which Barrie himself had termed "delightful." And special equipment was set up to allow four characters at once to fly through the air.

The Wellesley season wound up with an impressive production of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, directed by Athan Karras, a native Greek with considerable experience in his country's great classics. He presented a movingly stylized and austere show, using Gilbert Murray's not too satisfactory translation (Yeats' is no better; there is still need for a truly actable translation). Barry Morse, whose forte is high comedy, made an admirable Oedipus, but he could not plumb the depths of his final scene. Sydney Sturgess was badly miscast as Jocasta; but Ellis Rabb acted as cathartic a Tiresias as one is ever likely to see. The corporate delivery of the Chorus of Elders lacked rhythmic precision.

Boston Summer Playhouse

Lee Falk, who for a dozen summers had produced plays in New England Mutual Hall, decided to throw in the towel after losing money the past two summers. Stepping into the gap came the Boston Summer Playhouse. The first offering, a dreadful item called Fair Game, was given an insultingly inept performance. After a quick reshuffling of plans, the Playhouse bounced back with a fairly amusing production of F. Hugh Herbert's delightful sophisticated comedy, The Moon is Blue, in which Frank Langella and Frederick Morehouse '59-3 performed with considerable skill. Jan de Hartog's The Four-poster, a series of lovely vignettes of married life, came off moderately well in the hands of Tad Danielewski and Sylvia Daneel; but the play really cries out for polished husband-and-wife teams like Hume Cronyn-Jessica Tandy and Rex Harrison-Lili Palmer.

The Playhouse hit its peak with an excellent production of Arthur Miller's A View From the Bridge, a powerful and almost successful attempt at a new kind of poetic realism in the field of tragedy. Robert J. Lurtsema brought first-rate dynamism and nobility to the leading role of Eddie Carbone. Dana Bate was fine as his older cousin Marco. And Dean Gitter '56 played the lawyer Alfieri with intelligence.

The four characters in The Glass Menagerie, the other of Tennessee Williams' two great plays, captured only some of the work's beautiful subtlety and fragility. Once again, the best job was turned in by Frank Langella as the son Tom. The Playhouse then resurrected the famous 1844 play The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved, "a moral domestic drama by W. H. Smith and a Gentleman." Marilyn Miller staged the work in period costume and old-school ham acting style; and the result was unflaggingly hilarious. Booing, hissing, and the throwing of peanuts were actively encouraged. A pianist furnished background accompaniment on a worn upright; and during the intervals singers favored the audience with such oldies as "'Til We Meet Again," "Curse of an Aching Heart," "Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird," "Father, Dear Father, Come Home to Me Now," "I'm Just Wild About Harry," and "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone." The Playhouse is closing its summer schedule currently with a production of Louis Peterson's Take a Giant Step, a sensitive treatment of Negro adolescence that has enjoyed two New York productions in recent years.

Tufts Arena Theatre

As in previous summers the Tufts Arena Theatre provided an opportunity for student apprentices to acquire or improve their basic acting technique. Some years the group has had one or two truly outstanding talents; this summer there was none, but a few did show more than average aptitude, notably Karen Johnson, Alvin Cohen, and Helen Kelly.

The directors usually make up for the lack of performing skill by choosing off-beat plays; and this summer was no exception. The company kicked off with Goodrich & Hackett's The Great Big Doorstep, and followed it with two of Eugene Ionesco's avant-garde one-acters: The Lesson; and Jack, or the Submission. Neither of the last two is in a class with Ionesco's The Chairs; but both are intriguing if too drawn out dramatizations of his thesis that people just cannot communicate sufficiently through language. Jack was more imaginatively staged here than the New York production last year.

The revival of Alison's House, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Susan Glaspell in 1931, showed us some writing that could not get by in the theatre today; but the story, based on the mysterious life of poetess Emily Dickinson, is inherently dramatic and playworthy. A woman also wrote the group's next offering, The Chalk Garden. Enid Bagnold's play about two interlocking struggles is a good deal better than Miss Glaspell's.

A major event was the American premier of The Burnt Flower-Bed, written in 1952 by the late Italian dramatist Ugo Betti. Betti has been hailed as a greater playwright than Pirandello; he is certainly not that, but he does deserve a place among the most important modern writers for the theatre. This play deals with the problem of present-day nihilism and international political diplomacy. If it did not lapse periodically into propagandistic sermonizing, it would be a masterpiece.

As a tribute to the late Ethel Barry-more, the Tufts Theatre concluded the season with The Royal Family. George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber wrote this play 32 years ago as an affectionate spoof of the whole Barrymore family in the Twenties when it was the reigning theatrical dynasty.

Kaufman, this time in collaboration with Moss Hart, also wrote The Man Who Came to Dinner, which the Harvard Summer Theatre Group chose to put on in the Union Common Room. Resourcefully directed by Julius L. Novick '60 under difficult conditions, this witty satire about the notorious Alexander Woollcott emerged as a highly entertaining production. Mikel Lambert '59, as Maggie, gave the most consistently fine performance--poised, polished, and sensitive. Other good work came from Earle Edgerton '56 (in the title role), Richard Dozier '60, Marguerite Tarrant '59, John Wolfson '60, and Erich Segal '58.

At Kresge Auditorium, the M.I.T. Summer School sponsored Barry Morse in Merely Players, a "one-man theatrical scrapbook." Morse described his show as "a light-hearted look at the actor and his life, his ups and downs, troubles and triumphs--in fact and fiction, in various periods and places." Knowledgeable chatting alternated with solo excerpts.MIKEL LAMBERT '59 and EARLE EDGERTON '56 starred in "The Man Who Came to Dinner."