The Lion in Winter

Camp, camp, the boys are marching, from the sun-kissed shores of Fire Island to their citadel at Esquire--and if any of the lads look in on The Lion in Winter, they'll simper themselves silly. James Gollman's play, which has something to do with Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, is vintage 1932 costume jewelry, so bad it's...well, bad. Inevitably, copies of the script will find their way to the shelves of TRUC, where they should nestle comfortably between the lunchpail ties and the back numbers of Combat Kelly.

Robert Preston, this disaster's star, noted recently that it's the most "literary" play he's read in years, and indeed it is. Take, for example, the twelfth century similes: "You're like the rocks of Stonehenge, nothing can knock you down;" or, "You're dull as plainsong." or then again, "You're so foul you're fair." At times, it seems like the entire purpose of the drama is to show that the Plantagnets were, after all, just folks. "You're a failure as a father," the adolescent Prince John accuses the King, while the Queen muses, "Children, children, they're all we have." But the literary language relieves the suburban situation: "Christmas" and "architect," after all, are used as participles.

Works of this genre, known to the trade as "costume plays," were common currency before the war, and even immediately after. (Ingrid Bergman played Joan of Lorraine in the late forties.) Preston is quite right in his statement that, "It's the kind of thing Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne used to do," but I wonder if it's fair to remember that magnificent team for the cheapest of their quasi-historical vehicles. In better moments they could be found performing the works of Sherwood, Coward, Molnar, and Shaw.

Yet, however inadequate Goldman's play be, Director Noel Willman has somehow contrived to make is worse. Olde English folk songs ("God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" etc.) are piped over the loudspeaker after every blackout, and stage movement is held to a static minimum. Unfortunately, radiant Rosemary Harris as the dowdy, embittered Queen looks even better than she did as Ophelia two year ago; while cherubic and smooth-skinned Bruce Scott, late of the Merv Griffin Show, fails to convince anybody that he's Prince John, who, as the text repeatedly states, is the victim of massive acne. As for the miscast Mr. Preston, we are reminded with his every movement what a great musical comedy performer he is. Unfortunately, the depressing influence of the Literary has dimmed the euphoria with which he used to light into all those trombones. Nowadays, he resembled no one so much as Tiberius Caesar of whom Suetonius said, "he habitually wore the expression of an man straining on the stood."