Shakespeare Revisited

Shakespeare did not write excerpts; he wrote plays. This is the start of the trouble with the program for two players, "Shakespeare Revisited," which has just joined the repertory at Stratford. In this magma, Helen Hayes and Maurice Evans are offering snippets from eighteen plays in the course of two hours, believe it or not, with condescending and insulting commentaries tossed in along the way.

Evans is dressed in a tuxedo, Miss Haves in an evening gown (green in the first half, black in the second) occasionally pieced out with a shawl or cap. The all-purpose setting, by Don Shirley, consists of a platform with a bench and two stools, and a backdrop flat.

The evening begins with Evans delivering the Prologue from Henry V. But when Shakespeare wrote, "Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts," he had no idea of the imperfections that would blight this production. And even Coleridge himself would have to admit that there are limits to the "willing suspension of disbelief."

For, mark you, the two performers are not giving a reading; they would have us believe that they are acting. And they must be judged accordingly.

So Miss Hayes essays Rosalind. We are supposed to believe that this gray-haired, begowned lady well into her sixties is a young girl disguised as a young man (an Elizabethan spectator would be expected to take this lady for a boy playing a girl disguised as a young man--the kind of multiple twist that only Genet in The Maids has been able to bring off to perfection).

The sight of Miss Hayes trying to cavort about with teenage movements is simply repulsive. If you're going to act, Miss Hayes, act your age!

In fact, Jerome Alden, who is responsible for arranging the excerpts, seems almost to have gone out of his way to choose parts unsuited to Miss Hayes. The fiery young Katharina in Taming of the Shrew, for example. And that other Katharine, the French Princess of Henry V, whose English is bad --but whose native French, in this instance, is also bad, Miss Hayes insisting on saying le main, with the wrong gender.

Then she tries to portray the nymphet Juliet. Now Sarah Bernhardt, Miss Marriott, and Siobhan McKenna have all played the role of Hamlet (the last with a good deal of success, I can personally testify). But then Miss Hayes comes along trying to be Ulysses, of all things--and with Evans sitting not five feet away!

Close your eyes, you say. That doesn't help, for her Shakespearean diction is monotonous, and she shows not the slightest grasp of the music and rhythm of the lines. She ruins Lady Macbeth's crucial "We fail?" and, as Portia, she delivers "The quality of mercy is not strained" as a question. What on earth is one to make of that?

Her only previous Shakespearean experience was as Portia and Viola. I admire her when she sticks to the limited bailiwick in which she can excel. But as a Shakespearean she is a nullity. She is often termed the doyenne of American actresses; but her current gambol earns her no better title than Helen of Try.

Next to Miss Hayes, Evans seems positively Giel-good. He does have plenty of experience playing the Bard. He speaks clearly, and with some resonance. Still, he cannot save the day.

Sticking his right hand under his tuxedo jacket behind his back is not enough to create the malevolent, hunchbacked Richard III. Nor has he the brio for Henry V. In Macbeth's "If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'were well/It were done quickly," etc., he follows the idiotic example of Kemble, Macready and Irving by making a full stop after 'well' and joining the rest to the next sentence. And from time to time to time Warren Enters, the director, allows Evans to lapse into his annoying mannerism of indulging in quavering drops of pitch at-phrases' ends when he wants to feign emotionalism.

The two laudable portrayals of the evening do belong to Evans. The first is Biron's soliloquy "And I, forsooth, in love!" from Loye's Labour's Lost. The second is the scene in Midsummer Night's Dream where Bottom and his cronies prepare the "Pyramus and Thisbe" episode; here Evans, in a delightful virtuosic display, takes all the roles himself. The only tamdem bit that builds up any dramatic power at all is the closet scene from Hamlet, in which Miss Hayes' Gertrude is passable.

But what are these two really attempting? They are trying--without benefit of proper costumes, sets, makeup, context, and story--to capture and convey three-dimensional characters almost instantaneously, whether from farce, comedy, romance or tragedy. This requires real genius to bring off. And neither Miss Hayes nor Mr. Evans is that gifted. Sir John Gielgud is; but the wondrous success he had with his solo Shakespearean. evening, "The Ages of Man," should not be interpreted as encouragement to everyone with an Equity card to "go, thou, and do likewise."

The current program gives us Miss Hayes and Mr. Evans (both a bit insecure in their lines on opening night) trying vainly to recapture the aura of their 1940 production of Twelfth Night together. It suggests nothing so much as the U.S.S. Caine's Captain Queeg trying to relive his triumphal solution of the bygone cheese theft when a quart of fresh Strawberries was unaccounted for. "Shakespeare Revisited" is Shakespeare recidivous.

And what is still sadder: while Hayes & Evans are on stage, there are in the environs an entire company of players and & whole stage crew doing absolutely nothing. In none of the previous seven seasons has the Festival failed to present three full-scale play productions. I hope the lesson to be learned from the current blunder will not be lost on the board of trustees. Meanwhile, the Festival's commendable production of Richard II and Eric Berry's definitive Falstaff keep this season from being a total loss