On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley Good Repertory And Low Comedy The Taming of the Shrew. By William Shakespeare. The American Shakespeare Festival Production. Directed by Norman Lloyd. At the...
...The Tunnel of Love pictures a childless couple hoping to adopt a child...
...Jose Perez as Candido, Miriam Colon as his little friend, and Anna Appel as a friendly neighbor are most effective in the large and valid cast, in a play that deserves its long run...
...These two forces have combined for the already welcomed Measure for Measure and the current Taming of the Shrew...
...smiles mellow welcome to a new people in our melting pot...
...The swiftly cooked tour —Middle West, New York, Paris, Seville, Rome—and the tourist ways are not well-woven with the conflicts in the play, for which the folks might as well have stayed at home...
...Sly would be amorous with the page dressed as his wife...
...The reasons for this are many, but only when the formula is found may New York hope to have the basis for that continuous growth together which is essential to the full flowering of the theater...
...The New York stage of our time —though it has produced many good performers, directors and designers —has been unable to build a permanent repertory group...
...The Shrew will be followed on March 19 by Webster's The Duchess of Malfi...
...Presented and directed by Shepard Traube...
...At the Phoenix...
...even the tailor whose gown Petruchio spurns is a vivid figure, as the mop-headed servants form an amusing crew...
...Meanwhile, two farces, offered no doubt to warm the wintry days, brought only a further chill on Broadway...
...The latter is a rollicking romp, from the moment Christopher Sly falls drunken on English ground, through his dashing across the stage of Padua, to the final lecture on wifely obedience by Kate, the one-time shrew...
...In truth, Mike Kellin as Christopher Sly almost runs away with the play...
...Presented by and at the Greenwich Mews...
...The easy-going charm of their Adieux capped a succession of superbly presented plays...
...Don Ameche's perpetual smile adds little to the evening...
...Less distasteful but no less disappointing is the American tourists' jaunt in Holiday for Lovers, with its sudden change in the father from domination to understanding release, as the two daughters find freedom in their love...
...At the Longacre...
...Presented by the Theater Guild...
...By Walt Anderson...
...By Ronald Alexander...
...In this goodbye gesture, sets and snatches of their earlier offerings were mingled with gracious comments (in English as well as French) and some deft miming by Barrault...
...No charge, just a contribution: Here's a group indeed working for love...
...The Tunnel oj Love...
...finally, with a net on a pole, he snatches up a flask in triumph...
...This is a serious theme that might well hold our sympathy, but authors and director voted in favor of laughs, with the result that the plot surrenders to the gags...
...We must look off-Broadway for the beginning of such ventures—to the Stratford, Connecticut, Shakespeare group, for instance, and to the Ham-bleton-Houghton players down at the Phoenix...
...he climbs the balcony pole in fright or reaches down for a drink...
...On an elementary level, with no shadings of character, the play teaches a wholesome lesson while managing a measure of dramatic hold...
...From the novel by Peter De Vries...
...It is a sort of Abie's Irish Rose for the Puerto Ricans, with Jewish and Irish looking on...
...Holiday for Lovers...
...Pernell Roberts, who with a mellow mixture of simulated violence and genuine charm quite tames the shrew, has not been so successful with the director...
...Apart from the pleasure in this and their several plays, there remains the recognition of the value of a tradition and a repertory theater...
...Me, Candido...
...The husband and the adoption-bureau investigator get together and provide the little bastard for him and his wife to adopt...
...Also off Broadway, for some time though I have just caught up with it, Me, Candido...
...A word of farewell is due the most effective group on Broadway this season, the Madeleine Renaud— Jean-Louis Barrault Company...
...All the liquor and laughter onstage cannot overcome the feeling that the whole affair is a cheat...
...On opening night, Hiram Sherman most amusingly announced the Stratford plans for this summer...
...At the Royale...
...as the waif Candido finds a home and three fathers...
...But the Kate of Nina Foch is a beauty caught in a whirlwind, with no chance for lighter lilting of character to shine through...
...The Phoenix plans are nearer...
...By Joseph Fields and Mr...
...Philip Bourneuf, Morris Carnovsky, Jerry Stiller and more have their moments of high caricature...
...De Vries...
...Carmen Mathews, George Mathews, and other competent players help give amusing moments to another trivial farce that makes us long for good repertory...
Vol. 40 • March 1957 • No. 10
