Captain Brassbound's Conversion

[Giants, Walter Schirra and the Summer School Player's production of "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" are, respectively, the three things to have brightened my day. The first two I find myself prevented from writing about; the third, I further find, I have already commented upon. Hence, with your permission, a second edition of my review of "Captain Brassbound," suitably revised, corrected and--a la Martin Gardner--annotated.]

"I never knew you had a brother, Harvard," says Lady Cicely Waynflete to her brother-in-law, Sir Howard Hallam, in the first act of Captain Brassbound's Conversion. And Howard answers (unpardonably): "Perhaps because you never asked me." It's like that all the way through three long acts: hackwork by a great playwright. Shaw's intention, no doubt, was to present a series of outrageous sentiments in elegant language, but all that he actually achieved was a preposterous plot, a smattering of coy jokes and wheezy epigrams and a brace of cardboard characters (there's even a comic Cockney).

And yet, by some incomprehensible alchemy, the Summer School Players have been fired by this play to produce by far their best performance of either this or last summer. [This is admittedly no longer particularly relevant, but it may give you some sort of standard of comparison. Besides, it's still true.] The Players, in fact, seem to enjoy themselves extravagantly; they crack their dreary jokes with every sign of glee; manipulate a formidable number of accents and dialects with surprising confidence; and don't even slow down in the middle of the dialogue's horrible stretches of Moorish waste. They are themselves as funny as their play is tiresome.

A good deal of their inspiration, of course, must have come from Donald Soule's sets, which are so good as to merit mention before anything else. Soule's Moroccan garden and cartle have a Mediterranean brilliance and intensity that make anyone on stage appear, inevitably, just a little more interesting than he could hope to all by himself. (It is a light which also shows off to [excellent] advantage Lewis Smith's handsome fin-de-niecle costumes.)

Then, too, the Players could never have gone very far without Joseph Everingham's briskly professional direction. The packing is perfect, as it must be--most of the line haven't a glimmer of a chance unless they're ripped off as fast as humanly possible. At the same time, the staging is relaxed, assured and deft: there is no stumbling, and little awakwardness.

Yet none of this top-flight technical assistance can by itself fully account for the inspiration of the Summer Players, many of whom have never been so good before. [See not above.] Take Joanne Hamlin, for instance. Her Lady Cicely is everything Shaw himself could have wanted from the part: she can completely silence the ditherings of male incompetence in her quiet, unruffled voice that will not tolerate nonsense. Demurely dominating, she establishes her pleasant despotism early in the first act, and it is never subsequently seriously shaken....

[Or take Paul Barstow (the new Howard Hallam), a morose and lanky bird of prey, who is somehow at once the hangingest judge in England and--the proper Shavian combination--a silly old fool.] Sir Howard, naturally, is one of Lady Cicely's first successful take-over bids, and Barstow succumbs with the proper air of well-bred petulance. Then there's Robert Chapman, who, as Captain Hamlin Kearney (an American naval officer devised to fill up the last act), suffers such an astounding sea change as to be almost unrecognizable. Kearney is the last of Lady C's successes, and when Chapman surrenders, you know she has conquered the salt-bitten gallantry of the entire U.S. Navy.

Two local comic geniuses, David Cole and Kenneth Tigar, mug their way through minor roles. Cole is the comic Cockney--very much so; and Tigar's beatific moronic grin makes him much the most memorable of Captain Brassbound's crew. [Not that the rest are inadequate: one of the others is quite first rate, although I inadvertently ignored him first time round. I refer, of course, to Donald Lyons, who gives us an again Bright Young Thing going to seed at just the proper rate of speed. The Captain himself, alas, is not so memorable. Terrence Currier has taken over the role; and though he certainly looks a proper Black Pete, his voice gets lost somewhere in his swarthy beard.]

It all seems too good to last, nevertheless. And it won't after Saturday night. Until then you have just six chances to see a first-rate show. I figure it will cost you only $9.00 to go all six times.