On Stage

...The one question that should be asked at a Pinter play is "What does it ail matter9" It burns off all the fog seeping from the stage of the Billy Rose into the dutifully laughing audience I care about Rabe's civilians, Schiller's monarchs and the eternal agonies they embody I care about a cast like Mary Ure Rosemary Harris and Robert Shaw and a designer like John Bury, wasted at the Rose But about Pinter's norcharacters9 Never They have just enough substance to fill out an inconsequential one-act play, and I have been forced to endure movie than enough of those already this season...

...the incorrigible Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee hacked away at the works and witticisms of Beerbohm with uniformly gross results, as when his dismissal of Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet (' tres grande dame") became "a great queen'" In Unlikely Heroes, Larry Arrick adapted and directed three Philip Roth pieces in the story-theater manner, often making characters tell us about attitudes and incidents instead of act them out George Furth, the author of the book for Company, did write four original one-actors for Twigs, devoted to a mother and each of her three daughters, but only the second play, about an ex-chorine in a horrid marriage, has any impact, a fine cast, headed by Sada Thompson as all the ladies, is the evening's single distinction...

...Bleckner's production of Sticks and Bones is in mint condition, with a cast that is easily the best I've seen at the Public, Cliff De Young, Elizabeth Wilson and Charles Seibert are particularly fine The direction is compellingly taut and always up to Rabe's considerable demands Here the homecoming of a blinded Vietnam vet becomes a unique combination of bitter farce, aching sadness and more than a little menace David, the young vet, alternates between wanting to have nothing whatsoever to do with his folks (Ozzie, Harnet, Rick) and trying to make them stop engorging tons of fudge and pretzels long enough to face the horrible truth he can see about Vietnam They refuse to do so with a vehemence that will inevitably destroy either him or them...

...Rabe's symbols need to be more fully developed For example, he could have made better use of the Vietnamese Spirit-Girl (the lovely Asa Gim) who follows David home Similarly, he should have bi ought onstage the man named Hank whom David and Ozzie argue over, Hank's wanderlust and congenital physical disability represent something about America we should see, not merely hear about Yet despite these minor failings...

...How gratifying it is, then, to see the two full-length plays by David Rabe, now at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, and find them graced by a true sense of the possibilities of the stage and strengthened, instead of weakened, by a social conscience Rabe, a Vietnam veteran, has made the war his leading character in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones, both directed by Jeff Bleckner He has made the war a villain, too, and not as any ordinary protest dramatist would, his soldiers are neither robots nor monsters and his Vietnamese are not precious innocents (Compare Rabe's greedy mama-san madame to Geoige Tabori's haiku-spouting peasant m Pinkville ) He writes with a sure grasp of military rhetoric ("What do you SEE on my SLEEVE at the height of my SHOULDER lessa-little9") as well as home-front banalities, like the father's simple plea after his son hurts Mom's feelings "Why don't you ask her to cook something for you9 Might make her feel good ". Even his lacks are likable, tor they stem from ambition Since no one writer is about to get all the facts or impact of Vietnam into any one compact work for some time yet, I do not fault Rabe too much for failing to dig deeply or broadly enough in Training Nonetheless, Pavlo, our young hero who goes from eagerness in boot camp to dissolute cynicism m action, strikes me as a rather sketchy specimen for a GI Everyman Rabe was probably on the right track to have him partially conditioned by Hollywood's heroics, though this hardly novel insight brings on his worst line of dialogue "You had many fathers??movie men," says Pavlo's mother...

...Sticks is a masterly blend of contrasts that offers present satisfaction and holds out immense promise...

...The other new work appearing at the Public, Richard Wesley's The Black Terror, deserves little comment It has been praised, I'm sure, only because everyone involved in it is a Negro and no decent-thinking white reviewer wants to be mistaken for George Wallace Some of my tenderminded colleagues may also have been swayed by the Reverence for Life that its terrorist hero (played by a neo-Brando figure called Kain) begins feeling once he's assigned to kill blacks I personally find Wesley fixated on violence, but even if Terror were as pacifistic as the Beatitudes, it would still be contemptible if written and performed as ama-teurishly as it is now Repetitious harangues serve as dialogue, while mushy diction and seizures pass for acting Only Marjorie Kellogg's sets are professional Artistic discrimination is nothing to be ashamed of, and boringly vile theater should not be tolerated...

...I would ha\e doubted my being in the Beaumont if Ray Fry hadn't been stalking about on stage, giving his beloved imitation of Ray Fry and Aline MacMahon had not been doing her specialty, a truly first-rate interpretation of Aline MacMahon What Robert Phalen and Andy Robinson were up to I really cannot say Phalen, whose scrawny physique and jumpy manner are those of a farceur, not the dashing young Mortimer, is unfortunately miscast Andy Robinson, speaking every line in a thin, wheedling drone, makes a Davison who seems to be ravaged by adenoids, not a bystander tragically consumed in the heat generated by friction at Court Far from feeling sympathy tor these lads, I wanted to see both of them clapped in the Tower It is a great improvement, though, when only a few performers instead of an entire Lincoln Center production deserve to be sent to the block...

...The City Center's recent attempt to snatch the Vivian Beaumont Theater for itself may have inspired the Lincoln Center troupe to rise to this play, for it certainly has Jules Irving's direction moves the evening firmly along No one gives a great performance, but most company regulars (Philip Bosco, Sydney Walker...

...Stephen Elliott, Robert Symonds) blend with visitors (Nancy Marchand, Salome Jens) into a strong ensemble Douglas W Schmidt's settings are splendid m their bold simplicity and Malcolm McCormick's costumes only slightly less so...

...There is a great play now being performed that triumphantly dramatizes power and pride, and the inexorable destruction they can wreak I refer to Schiller's Mary Stuart, and I am as astonished as I am delighted to report that the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center is giving it a generally good performance True, Schiller can be faulted for twisting a historical fact or two, but he does so only to mold a more strikingly dramatic scene Elizabeth never met Mary Queen of Scots, they meet in Mary Stuart to dramatize the conflict between them that certainly existed Stephen Spender s translation and adaptation, never obtrusively "poetic,' give both the intimate and the epic their proper scale and tone...

...On Stage NEWCOMERS AND OLDTIMERS BY HARRIS GREEN T he appearance of any playwright of promise is doubly welcome in a season like the present that began in a fizzle of one-act losers, some of them no more than inflated adaptations of short stories In The Incomparable Max...

...Lon Chaney was definitely an influence of one kind or another on Peter Cameron, the Pavlo I endured He invariably grimaced, winced, snorted and twitched??twice??then putting on any of these mannerisms once would have been a bit much Cast substitution, the bane of Off-Broadway, has wreaked havoc with Bleckner's production in the months since it opened The subsequent replacement for Cameron cannot possibly be anything but an improvement...

...Tm o come to the amorphous minimalisms of Harold Pinter after the grand concerns of Schiller gives one a distinct sense of Western art subsiding with a whimper Pinter's latest, Old Times, is of interest only for his abandoning (for Old Times sake9) the wonderfully cryptic poetry of Landscape and Silence that his enthusiasts assured us marked the onset of a terrific new style Apparently it bored him as much as it did me Although fragmented, this new play is closer to the old manner but with a maddening stress on the interrogatory "Was she your best friend9 And poor Kate??then you're away, what does she do9 And does it still exist, I wonder9 Do you know9 Can you tell me9" Such gripping demands constitute much of the dialogue exchanged among a husband, his wife and her roommate of 20 years past...

...We, of course, are supposed to be stimulated into making a few inquiries ourselves At least Pinter's converts insist that something, they never say what, is being implied here about the past??illusion, dead hopes, etc Are the women really talking at this point or is the husband imagining their chat9 Is the roommate fantasizing9 Have she and he been lovers9 Have she and the wife7 Eventually the husband breaks down in tears, and who can blame him9 Almost anything can be true in this play, since the roommate asserts, "There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened " If a playwright is permitted that much leeway by reviewers and a public eager to wolf down any trendy morsel, what can't he get away with...