On Stage
SCHNEIDER, ALAN
ON STAGE By Alan Schneider Hooray for the APA Like Samuel Johnson's dog, which walked on its hind legs, the remarkable thing about the APA (Association of Producing Artists) is that it...
...It began three years ago, when artistic director Ellis Rabb, himself an actor of standing, approached 100 of his colleagues equally dissatisfied with the unevenness of today's theatrical opportunities...
...In the end, as in the beginning, Rabb had to operate on his own...
...ON STAGE By Alan Schneider Hooray for the APA Like Samuel Johnson's dog, which walked on its hind legs, the remarkable thing about the APA (Association of Producing Artists) is that it exists at all...
...What matters, and will matter more as the Broadway dinosaurs push each other off the cliff, is that Rabb and his fellow rebels have not been content to await a millenium in the American theater...
...Of the three, Sheridan's pastiche proved most satisfying: sly, smooth, charmingly staged...
...Until this spring, APA was not anxious to face the prospect of New York...
...From these dissidents a pool of actors formed and began rehearsing scenes in a miserable midtown loft...
...All have the blessings of the management, which recognizes that the centrifugal forces of the American theater do not encourage solidarity...
...Some come and go as APA roles lose out to commercial opportunities elsewhere...
...A modernized Seagull, again with Miss Harris—this time as a shy yet scintillating Nina—was clever but somehow more abstract than universal...
...They have begun an enterprise based on "the right to fail" and to create the conditions in which the things they believe in their hearts will take place...
...Chekhov's carriages are not easily replaced by motor cars...
...The company has since played the summer circuit, spent a winter in Bermuda, a fall strengthening Milwaukee's foundering Fred Miller Theater, and a season as Princeton University's professional group...
...For one thing, the company was not sure of finding a suitable theater...
...The Tavern, George M. Cohan's old hat of a melodrama, had one of the best offstage windstorms ever...
...There had been talk of "taking over" the Phoenix...
...In its three-year enforced wanderings outside the walls of New York, the theatrical Jericho, APA has used some 60 performers in a repertory of 15 plays...
...Its acting style is classically oriented, with a vaguely English influence, and definitely non-Studio...
...And Grizzard was genially disarming as the mysterious, and not quite satisfying, vagabond...
...Here Miss Harris, devastating once more, played a lisping, melting heroine (Mary Pickford could not have been more cuddlesome...
...Actors are paid $100 a week, not a princely sum but twice what off-Broadway offers...
...APA is still an infant prodigy...
...In addition, there were unusually valuable performances by Clayton Corzatte and George Grizzard as the Surface brothers and David Hooks as their uncle...
...It was blessed with a delicious china-doll Lady Teazle in Rosemary Harris, as well as Will Geer's lovable old codger of a Sir Peter...
...For this company of youthful performers, which includes such theater "names" as Rosemary Harris, George Grizzard and Gerry Jedd, has chosen to desert the usual theatrical fleshmarkets to find its own place, and in its own good time...
...APA opened with a varied but representative repertoire — The School for Scandal, The Seagull, and The Tavern—manned by the strongest talents Rapp could muster...
...It is definitely superior to the uncertain and synthetic fabrications of Stratford-onthe-Housatonic...
...That it does not yet rival the Canadian Stratford or menace the standing of the Berliner Ensemble is to be expected...
...With three productions recently made available to New Yorkers, the company has evinced a skill, a unified style and a versatility at least on a level with other top American ensemble ventures — Shakespearein-the-Park, Circle-in-the-Square, the Living Theater, Arena Stage, the Actors Workshop...
...Thus far, APA shows promise not only of surviving failure, but, infinitely more difficult, of surviving its own success...
...He chose the old Folksbiene, a pleasant if not easily found bandbox on East Broadway...
...they have started hacking one out for themselves...
...The success or failure of the individual productions, however, is relatively unimportant...
...Some sponsor might have donated an empty Broadway house for a short season—but none did...
...Though interesting, The Tavern somehow seemed wasted effort, like the Old Vic giving us Charley's Aunt...
Vol. 45 • May 1962 • No. 10
