Helen of Troy

Jacques Offenbach's score for La Belle Helene has probably never been equalled by anybody except Offen-bach. It is "music so French," said James Agate, "that it needed a German Jew to write it:" irrepressible and irresistible music, subtly mischievous, knowing, deft, and inexhaustibly high-spirited. It alone is worth the price of admission to the Arts Center, which is very fortunate since it alone is nearly all that this venture has to recommend it.

The Offenbach problem is that though the music is at least as intoxicating now as it could have been ninety or a hundred years ago, most of the libretti (including the one for La Belle Helene by Meilhac and Halevy) appear to be not for all time but of an age. The most obvious solution to the problem would be a recording or concert performance in the original--and, to most of us, impenetrable--French. But the music is so gracefully opposite to its subject matter that something of precious value is lost when there is no palpable context for it; Offenbach was, au fond, a man of the theatre.

The ideal solution is to make a new version of one of the better shows (such as La Belle Helene): in Agate's words, "to furbish up the old sparkle and avoid substituting a new one, to stick to the operette and to keep the thing French." The solution arrived at for "Albert Marre's production," as the current venture is billed, is to tinker and tamper and mess and fuss and fiddle and diddle and hope for the best. The result not surprisingly, is a galimafree, or, as we say in America, a hash.

The new version is still a burlesque of the Greek myth about Helen's abduction from Sparta by the prince of Troy, with a few numbers added from other Offenbach scores, and some of the best songs from La Belle Helene cut.

But the book and lyrics have been rewritten, by Bill Hoffman and Marshall Barer respectively, in a grinding discord of styles: "Somebody goofed" alternates with "Such audacity deserves punishment." Mr. Marre has engaged Broadway performers rather than singers of any pretensions, but none of them can make very much headway against the stubbornly unfunny material.

Joan Diener in the title role is tall, white-blonde, gorgeous, and unquestionably a mammal; she can launch my ships anytime. But she has been constrained (by the script, perhaps, or by Mr. Marre, or by her own predilections) to play Helen with an icy hauteur that eliminates the possibility of any emotional response from the audience except pure lust. Perhaps it is too much to ask, but it would be nice to have a Helen who is likable as well as desirable. On her own terms, however, Miss Diener acts quite well enough, and her singing is not unpleasant.

Her Paris is a strident but adequate tenor named William Tabbert, who is built on the short stubby pattern traditional for tenors, but a little bit odd for one of history's most famous seducers. He acts in a manner for which a really first-rate tenor could be forgiven. Morley Meredith, who has some reputation as a concert baritone, sings the priest Calchas sumptuously, giving some idea of how Offenbach's music can sound given the voices it deserves.

The box-office attraction and nominal star of the evening is Menasha Skulnik, for whom the supporting part of Menelaus has been not-very-gracefully beefed up. Instead of a characterization, Mr. Skulnik offers Mr. Skulnik. He understandably refuses to give up the accent and mannerisms which have served him so well over the years (probably he is unable to give them up); but as a result, he is wildly miscast as a gentile, and out of key not only with La Belle Helene, but even with the bastardized Helen of Troy. Worse yet, he debases his authentic and endearing talent by screaming and carrying on. He is sometimes funny, but the attempt to use his Jewishness as a running gag works predictably badly.

Mr. Marre was evidently aiming at a brash, vulgar, Broadway slickness, to the extent that he had anything specific in mind at all; but with limited amounts of money and time, all he could manage was the vulgarity and the brashness. Most of Todd Bolender's choreography seems to be designed for a chorus of unusually limited capacities, and looks like the pointless prancing around that capacities, and looks like the pointless prancing around that characterizes bad amateur Gilbert and Sullivan. His can-can (to the famous tune dragged in from Orpheus in Hades) is probably the soggiest in history.

The production was obviously conceived as a show rather than a musical evening, but it succeeds only as a program of songs impeded by dialogue--and succeeds none too well at that. Offenbach's works are still visible as theatre, as has been proved by Cyril Ritchard's Perichole at the Met and also by Stephen Aaron's Orpheus at Lowell House, but Albert Marre's Helen fails for want of any vestige of style or finesse. The exhilaration is missing; the champagne is flat, and while flat champagne can be drunk and even enjoyed, it is chiefly notable as a missed opportunity.