Oscar Wilde's Importance and the Insignificance of Fish
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph ? Shipley Oscar Wilde's Importance and the Insignificance of Fish The Importance of Being Oscar. By Michael MacLiammoir, mainly from the works of Oscar Wilde. Directed by...
...In spite of his final act of decision, he seems neither big nor little, but rather a poor fish...
...But these characters, petty or nasty in themselves, are not made vivid by apt dialogue nor brought to life with any depth...
...Directed by Hilton Edwards...
...another, fresh from Switzerland, addresses Edith as "William's mistress...
...Two stellar performers earlier this season brought to life Mrs...
...In this play, all the cronies of William Baker, an almost completely beaten man, urge him to pull himself together, to do himself justice...
...Edith, the woman who for twenty years has been leaving her husband in the suburbs to come down and sleep with Jimmy, is equally inconsequential...
...But it is only after the intermission, during which the Wilde trials are assumed to have taken place, that our hearts are stirred...
...Big Fish, Little Fish...
...One man drags in unnecessary and unclever remarks about lesbians...
...When his opportunity comes, they turn on him for planning to abandon them...
...Long sections of De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Gaol—not merely the wellknown "Each man kills the thing he loves" but the more searching "How else, save through a broken heart, can the Lord Christ enter in...
...Wilde responded: "Providence should be used to such temptations by now...
...Another new opening shows that good actors can really harm a bad play, by revealing and deepening its weaknesses...
...Pat Campbell and George Bernard Shaw through their extensive correspondence...
...We end with a deep pity for the man, combined with an admiration for two artists: the one portrayed, and the one that brings him to life for us to understand today...
...By Hugh "Wheeler...
...It gives a whole act to the trials of Oscar Wilde and (with Claire Luce in the role) introduces Wilde's wife, Constance...
...At the ANTA Theatre...
...but the audience fails to be shocked...
...Presented by Lewis Allen and Ben Edwards...
...Some of the richest offerings on Broadway are not plays at all...
...At the Lyceum Theatre...
...The characters just do not seem to matter...
...Jason Robards, Jr...
...When Wilde left Dublin for the greener (which here means less sophisticated) fields of London, an English lady asked: "Isn't that rather tempting Providence...
...They remain surface figures stirred round to demonstrate a theme...
...The theme of Big Fish, Little Fish—the way in which friendship may prove a selfish bond—is worthy of its stellar cast...
...reveal how sorrow deepens a man's understanding, bow pity widened Wilde's sense of sharing the human burden...
...but Ronnie's self-centered figure is a blurred mixture of mannerisms...
...This goodly crew has now been joined by Michael MacLiammoir, whose absurdly titled show captures the blown gaiety and the poignant sorrow of Oscar Wilde...
...Presented by S. Hurok and Roger Stevens...
...Perhaps dimly aware of this, the author tries to make up for the muddy character of the piece by shock tactics...
...The off-Broadway play adds to the pity one must have for a sensitive spirit, however aberrant, rudely plucked and exposed to scorn...
...Directed by John Gielgud...
...carries the chief burden of the play as the indecisive and lifepummeled William...
...He ends every telephone call, for example, with the same quick-patter, matter-of-fact tuning off, to girl or man: "Love, love, love...
...With shrewdly chosen lines from his author, and the deftest of commentary, MacLiammoir brings to life the green-flowered dandy whose genius went into his living, and merely his talent into his works...
...In a lighter vein, Carol Channing and Elsa Lanchester are even now separately showing us that a single comedienne may fill an evening adequately...
...All the skilled acting of Hume Cronyn just makes Jimmie Luton more obnoxious and boring a cornplainer, barking at all and sundry instead of facing his own inadequacies...
...By coincidence, Feast of Panthers, at the East 74th Street Theater, complements MacLiammoir's work...
...Galsworthy touched another aspect of this in The Pigeons...
...One of them even drops dead outside William's door...
...George Grizzard plays the young Ronnie, the successful one of the group...
...MacLiammoir comments that in Dublin they would cap or capsize such an observation...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 15
