On Stage

...The histrionic Glenn Case is particularly deficient as Irene St...

...Murder is committed...

...the right to suppress pornography, big business vs...

...That's about as much of the plot as it is safe to tell...

...Occasionally, Giovanni tends to become too self-conscious, too much at pains to prove how effectively he has captured the era...

...Such matters are not necessarily outside the purview of the theater, yet neither are they so inherently dramatic that hoary speechifying will bring them alive...

...It began, 30 years before, in India, during the Great Mutiny, at the red fort of Agra----"' Within minutes after the curtain went up my doubts vanished...

...The story follows the fortunes of three of Her Majesty's soldiers who steal the Maharajah's jewels and take a blood oath to keep the secret...

...At her confirmation hearing Loomis declares, "A uterus is like absolute pitch: some people have it, some don't...

...At the news of Loomis' arrival, Snow remarks, "This is an historic occasion...

...The action revolves around the Cain raised therein when the President announces his appointment to a previously vacant seat...

...The first is Director Giovanni's excellent feel for Late Victorian England—for the way people spoke (or at least for the way we imagine they spoke) and for grimy, foggy nocturnal London, with its mysterious opium dens and danger lurking around every corner...

...we are the parents of our ideas...

...The docudrama that recreated the Scopes monkey trial was in many respects a sententious piece of flummery, vastly overrated because its heart was so ob-viouslyIn the right place (with the "liberal" Darrow character, against the "conservative," psychotic William Jennings Bryan character...

...When Loomis attends a screening of a blue movie, one of the justices, following up on the religious theme, exclaims, "It's like having a nun at a stag party...

...Two of them soon betray the third...

...the little man...

...Enter, at the behest of a pretty young woman, Sherlock Holmes, cocaine junkie extraordinaire, the loyal Watson, and that effervescent dodo, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard...

...The First act, for instance, centers around Snow and Loomis having it out on the pornography issue...

...He also lingers in a rather smart-alecky manner on concerns that Victorians would have brushed under the rug, like syphilis and cocaine...

...There are several meretricious bits thrown in to keep the viewer awake: Snow has a heart attack (this to allow Loomis to show the audience how much she really cares for the man...

...Clair, daughter to one of the pact's three signatories...

...The play is ostensibly about how these two titans of the legal profession come to respect one another...

...and she is, as her roles thus far have shown, curiously incapable of using her prodigious technical abilities to convey warmth for the actors she plays opposite...

...It also testifies to the verity of an old proverb: Before you spit, find out which way the wind is blowing...

...When Lawrence & Lee aren't trying to be funny, they dispense homilies in an inexhaustible flow: "Haven't we outgrown those fears about the instability of the female of the species...

...And what terrible, deadly talk: "One man's pornography," says Snow, "may be another man's poetry...

...I must admit that I was prepared to dislike this show, for addicted as I am to Sherlock Holmes, I'd had quite enough of his popping out from every cranny in the popular culture, embarking on adventures recently unearthed by modern writers with dollar signs for eyes...

...And Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, authors of Inherit the Wind and A untie Mame, are nothing if not courageous...

...It was found among the effects of Dr...

...Revenge follows...

...The sight of him here at the tail end of his distinguished career, uttering banality after banality, is something one should try hard to miss, despite the fact that he is the production's sole redeeming feature: Fonda can take the worst line and give it the breath of life...

...male chauvinism, freedom of expression vs...

...It is grief enough that such hackery should reach the stage to begin with...

...She is Judge Ruth Loomis (Jane Alexander), a feminist who nevertheless promises to be the most conservative of associate justices...

...Act II is simply a clone of Act 1, except that the argument centers on the legitimacy of Big Business...

...She speaks with a deliberate slowness, as if to convince herself of the pieties she utters...

...The debate goes on rather drearily for some time before the act ends with nothing resolved...

...his wife divorces him because he's never at home (this to titillate the audience into expecting a Court romance that never happens, thank God...

...She feels that people have the right to decide what they want in their communities, and that pornography is one thing they definitely do not want...

...In a production this bright, though, a few sparks more or less make little difference...

...she has no humor or lightness to her delivery...

...Alexander is not nearly so good...

...He feels that anyone has the right to say or show whatever he pleases, that the First Amendment brooks no exception...

...Well, one man's dialogue may be another man's pornography, if you take pornography to mean any gross violation of decency...

...Like the Jesuits going co-ed...

...First Monday in October picks up the flaws of its predecessor—watered down ideas, stick-figure heroes—and adds to them redundancy of structure and paucity of language...

...But it is absolutely depressing to find Henry Fonda in the midst of it...

...JL.ll things considered, then, one could do worse than fluff and glitter...

...he can say more by rolling his eyes than most actors do in a whole Shakespearean speech...

...To get an idea of the intellectual and emotional poverty of First Monday one need merely compare it to Inherit the Wind, where the author's aims were the same but their dramatic powers at a considerably higher pitch...

...In the part of Inspector Lestrade, Edward Zang does not display enough flustered stupidity...

...In other words, for the atmosphere of Conan Doyle's stories...

...Through his movie roles in particular, Fonda, like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, has established himself as something more than an actor...

...Actually, the characterizations are so meager and predictable, one suspects that what the authors are looking for is not theater but a podium from which to declaim on the burning questions of the hour: women's rights vs...

...No performer is better at conveying a sense of decency, thought-fulness and inner strength...

...There is, however, one member of the Court who does not appreciate these fine qualities—Daniel Snow (Henry Fonda), who although he is an ardent civil libertarian, anti-big business and enjoys climbing mountains, of course bears no resemblance to retired Justice William O. Douglas...

...If, in future years, some other eye should read this memoir and some other hand be tempted to present it to the public in narrative form, it will, I hope, become apparent why I, myself, considered it best to leave unrendered, in the recital of my friend's outstanding cases, the heart of this appalling story...

...If you liked Earthquake in Sen-su-round, don't miss the storm scene in Act I. Finally, there is the acting: Paxton Whitehead's fine, imperious Holmes and Timothy Landfield's bewildered, stolid Watson...

...And the acting of the rest of the cast is not as distinguished as that of its two leads...

...He has come to stand, in a way, for America itself...

...This conclusion was reinforced by The Crucifer of Blood—as fluffy and glittery as they come, and the most enjoyable experience of the new season on Broadway...

...This unhappy concatenation notwithstanding, Loomis is an impressive woman: ambitious, moral, intelligent, dignified, eloquent, and—lest we think her nothing but a stuffed skirt—a good tennis player...

...To be sure, there are infelicities...

...Loomis is told by one of her dead husband's law partners that a publicity-shy financier, unseen by the public for many years—no resemblance to Howard Hughes—has actually been long dead (this, in a story too complicated and silly to merit detailed recounting, to provide Loomis the opportunity to say she'll resign, and in turn to provide Snow the opportunity to show how much he cares for the lady...

...A JL...

...The second pleasure is the scary special effects (by Bran Ferrin...

...Reading the program notes while waiting for the play to begin, I was convinced that my fears would be confirmed: "The full material on which this play is based has only recently come to light...

...the rest is talk, talk, talk...

...Sherlock Holmes...

...Their latest effort, First Monday in October, testifies to man's ability to spit in the face of his times...

...John Watson which had passed into the hands of a distant relative, and took the form of a memoir...

...Edwin Sherin directs without any special display of talent, and Oliver Smith has created sets that are meant to look dignified...

...Still, there were signs there that L&L knew how to construct a play where the increasingly tense confrontations between the two protagonists culminated in an inexorable ending...

...and Loomis says to Snow in a line I shall always treasure, "We make each other happen...

...First Monday is set in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D. C. (the title refers to the day the Court traditionally opens for business...

...further murders are afoot...

...Again, principles are stated, attacked, defended in a soapbox dialectic, and that pretty much is it...

...Paul Giovanni, the author and director, has nailed together a plot that may not be as tight or logical as one of Conan Doyle's but is nonetheless gripping...

...But no event in my subsequent life could ever erase from my mind the pain and horror of the events which it enshrines...

...We were young and most of our cases lay before us...

...As a result, some of the comic sparks that should fly between him and Holmes are never ignited...

...To Snow, Loomis' appearance on the scene means only that he will continue to find himself in the minority, writing one brilliant and eloquent dissenting opinion after another...

...The first page of that document reads as follows: 'The dreadful case of the blood crucifer occurred in London, in 1887, and formed one of the most painful and alarming episodes in my long association with Mr...

...But Crucifer has other strengths, and there is no danger in mentioning these...

...Yet these "dramatic" touches take up about 10 minutes of the show...