Great Performance in a Trifling Play
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE Great Performers In a Trifling Play By Joseph T Shipley The Great Sebastians. Directed by Bre-taigne Windust. Written and presented by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. At the ANTA...
...His thrust or parry has not the heat-lightning flicker of the true swordsman...
...Do great plays summon forth great audiences...
...Her countenance, though mobile, is more reserved: her body is fluid, but she makes less use of her extremities or of extremes...
...They are pleasant to watch in performance, even in a linsey-woolsey Lindsay and Crouse...
...The Lunts cavort through their paces in a contrived farce put together by two experienced men of the theater, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse...
...Do great actors inspire great plays...
...Here the play is a mirror of the players...
...No less a conscious artist than her husband, Lynn Fontanne is not so much the inspired ham...
...Lunt overacts his role, turning his portrayal of the character into an exhibition of his acting...
...she is supremely the worshipful wife, with ever the reserve of amusement that willingly yields the palm...
...he silently bids us: or "What can you expect of a woman...
...By that I mean the ability to keep the temperature of your head at zero while your heart is at 99 in the shade...
...We watch for that deprecating twist of the half-cupped hand, like a lotus flower unfolding to reveal a stamen of sophisticated savoir-faire...
...Yet, so superbly do the impeccable pair parade their talents that they seem to leave the wooden stage floor behind on a magic carpet of make-believe...
...Why have these talented performers spent so much of their time off stage and so much of their stage time in trifles...
...They refuse, and they escape torture by tricks that would disgrace a turn-of-the-century farce, which only Houdini Lunt and Dunninger Fontanne can gloss over and make, for the moment, seem amusing...
...She is content to be stellar...
...Here they are in a farce about a second-rate mind-reading team in Prague, whom the dictator wants to use to detect the traitor in his entourage...
...At the ANTA Theater...
...For he is at his best when engaged in a duel of the sexes...
...And there are others who can give such a perfect imitation of grief, sorrow and love that it doesn't matter whether they are feeling or not...
...The opening of this new play accords Alfred Lunt his meed: The curtain rises at the close of his act as The Great Sebastian in a variety theater in Prague, so that our applause of welcome becomes in the play an ovation at the end--and generously he grants an encore...
...Which brings me back to my opening query...
...They have lunched with Masaryk, who dies that night...
...Where are the great plays for the great Lunts...
...Their ascent to high comedy includes only Arms and the Man, Pygmalion and Amphitry on 38...
...their statement, says the Communist commissar, must confirm the verdict of suicide...
...As her own method, she pictured "pretty much a combination of the two...
...We expect the knowing gesture that waves the audience into his company...
...The Great Sebastians is a tricky fraud...
...he wordlessly asks...
...Such musings are provoked by the reappearance on Broadway of America's most popular acting team, Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt...
...His wife, Essie Sebastian (Lynn Fontanne), tries merely to bow off the stage...
...Years ago...
...His fiery moments burst like fireworks...
...He must not only have, but display, his skill...
...Why have they not enriched us with Shakespeare, or Moliere...
...Enjoy this with me...
...Lynn Fontanne wrote to me: "There are some who have wells of emotion in them so near the surface that all they have to do is say 'Mother' and they burst into tears...
...The Male--for this duel is not individual, it is universal, and even when two love one another as these two do the battle of the sexes goes on endlessly through them...
...Men are easily mollified: just let them think that you think them superior, your guide, your protector, your goal...
...The authors' joint efforts have this time produced no Life with Father, or even, despite political pretensions, a State of the Union...
...All her movements to depart, however, fail to pull her husband away from his applause...
...let him shine as the star...
...There has been considerable critical speculation about the interaction of the various elements of the theater...
...there must be showmanship enough for the audience to be aware it is a show...
...This has been so frequent a role of Lynn Fontanne that it seems incorporate in her style...
...Lynn Fontanno's acting continues cool, though she can hardly be characterized as in the shade...
...Her ideal role is Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew...
...The slightly nasal timbre of her husband's voice is counterpointed by a quizzical quality in her own, a sort of perpetual wonder at but tolerance of the obviousness of the male...
...They have, indeed, given the actors little more than a carpet on which to strut...
...but before they make their departure from the theatrical scene, let us hope this memorable couple will bring their rich talents to a memorable play...
Vol. 39 • January 1956 • No. 5
