poorly Served Talents

...Still, the evening is not a total loss One scene, in fact, is absolutely perfect Rose has been asked by a good looking school supervisor to attend a meeting with a few other teachers Not unexpectedly, the "few" wind up being only her and the meeting takes place in a bar What follows is a well-written, well-directed, beautifully performed dialogue/ monologue where Jackson irresistibly keeps the audience informed of what she thinks the man beside her is thinking and what she imagines both of them are going to say J T Walsh's gestures and occasional interjections are superb He finally tells her that he actually thought he would like to "do it" in the car She laughs and says OK...

...While Sam is willing to neglect his comic strip and buddies tor his wife, however, Tess is too addicted to success to give up anything for her husband After all, at the beginning and the end of the first act (amounting to two thirds of the evening), we see her being proclaimed "Woman of the Year" in some ballroom affair, wearing an extraordinary dress by Theoni V Aldredge that could have been made for Marlene Dietrich...

...Dr Richard A Gardner, of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, asked tor "laws that will make it illegal to amplify sounds above well-specified levels I usually am opposed to legal intervention of any kind in the theater But it producers persist in using discotheque methods then Dr Gardner merits the theatergoers' support Something can be done We already have law s prohibiting smoking and spitting...

...When Sam gets fed up and is ready for divorce, Tess starts worrying She flies to Colorado where her former husband, Larry, has been happily married for 15 years to Jan, a housewife charmingly played by Marilyn Cooper In a duet sung by Tess and Jan, each admires the situation of the other and deplores her own If Fred Ebb's lyrics are not overwhelmingly witty, they are nevertheless amusing...

...On Stage POORLY SERVED TALENTS BY LEO SAUVAGE It would no doubt be fascinating to spend an evening talking with Glenda Jackson-say, in a bar where the waiter did not feel offended if you asked for a glass of Riesling instead of Scotch-talking about education, boredom, feminism, marriage, or Rosa Luxemburg Since such an evening is conceivable only for her personal friends, for theatergoers a reasonable alternative would be watching Jackson take up these subjects in an appropriately structured, interesting and meaningful play But don't expect anything of the kind from Rose In this work by English writer Andrew Davies now at the Cort Theater, Jackson is a married teacher who, in addition to being tired of coming home every day to a mediocre husband, is annoyed by the old-fashioned disciplinary methods she is expected to use with young children at school And she reacts fitfully...

...What all this proves is that Lauren Bacall does not need a production custom-built for her without any other theatrical purpose She would have been more impressive, in my opinion, if she had returned to Broadway in a revival of Applause Or she should have had the good sense to star in a new musical chosen for its qualities, not hers...

...Davies, the Playbill tells us, has done many scripts for British television Perhaps that explains why what he has given us is less a play than a collection of scenes, some of them quite clever As we learned long ago from Paddy Chayefsky, television-writing can develop a good ear for everyday speech, a gift for quick observation and an instinct for finding the right words to put together a short skit around one limited idea The main concern is getting the viewer back for the rest of the show after the commercial, not the meaning of the whole Of course, Rose is being presented in a theater, rather than on television Nor is there any Scotch, let alone Riseling, between the sequences, and the spectators might be inclined to wonder whether it was worth paying the price of their tickets when the television set at home is already paid for...

...One last and absolutely necessary observation When I could Listen to John Kander's music without being deafened, it was pleasant I cannot say anything more on the subject, since I was busy most of the time wondering how to protect my eardrums from the thunder coming out of the amplifiers In a recent letter to the New York Times...

...There are times, too, when the audience is transformed, figuratively, into a class of children At one point, we are part of a school assembly being entertained by Rose, her headmistress and other teachers Rose acts in a slightly...

...unorthodox manner, the others are caricatured stereotypes Margaret Hilton, playing one of the teachers, knows how to provide comical impact when reciting a story, and Beverly May as the headmistress is quite good in keeping order among the "children" in the school auditorium Yet the scene reminds us that Roberto Athayde used the method to much greater dramatic effect with Estelle Parsons in Miss Margarida's Way The best thing about Rose, in any case, is the cast Nice as it would be to have her back on Broadway in a better play, Glenda Jackson does an outstanding job here Jessica Tandy is Rose's mother in two superior scenes that have no more perceptible connection with the rest of what is going on than the quotation from Rosa Luxemburg No matter Together, Jackson and Tandy are a joy A fate similar to Jackson's befalls Lauren Bacall in her return to Broadway Exactly 11 years after Applause, she is back at the Palace Theater in another musical bearing the title Woman of the Year The earlier show was taken horn All About Eve, a film with an interesting story written 20 years before by Joseph Mankiewicz The new one derives its text from a 1942 movie of the same title, and I have been told that it had an interesting plot as well But whatever playwright Peter Stone and director Robert Moore have adopted and adapted from the screenplay does not work well on the musical stage Indeed, Stone seems merely to have strung together a "vehicle" for Bacall...

...Her unconvincing, sophomoric parody of Barbara Walters notwithstanding, Bacall remains a top stage actress Everything in Woman of the Year is geared to bringing out the various aspects of her talent, including her still being able to dance and, properly aided by male partners, to perform somersaults Tony Charmoh's choreography, regrettably, is nothing special...

...Ultimately, Tess announces in front of her millions of viewers that she has decided to become a housewife So there is a reunion, but only after Sam-out of nobless oblige and respect for career-minded feminism-has explained to Tess that all he wants from her is a little love, not the sacrifice of her career...

...Unfortunately, the play also contains two absolutely awful scenes In the first, although we have been told very little about Rose's husband and almost nothing about their two daughters, Davies and director Alan Dossor have the seeming simpleton of a husband burst into tears upon finding out about his wife, the supervisor and the car In the second, the husband becomes ugly and threatening, telling Rose that if she wants a divorce, he will make it difficult for her to win custody of the children Despite the fact that she has never expressed any interest in her daughters, who remain unseen, this is enough to thwart Rose's "revolutionary" intentions and force her to accept conjugal as well as pedagogical boredom...

...True, Davies has her quote Rosa Luxemburg, though I did not catch the connection He also constantly resorts to the now hackneyed gimmick of interrupting what little action there is in order to let Jackson address us directly Thus we learn that she sometimes feels like a kind of revolutionary, "school-wise" and "sexwise," if not otherwise There is a danger, though, of Rose's life becoming as boring to the audience as it is to her...

...A TV personality called Tess Harding is in conflict with a famous comicstrip cartoonist named Sam Craig She says on television that the "funnies" are not funny He objects strenuously to her criticism of his vocation during a poker game with his buddies Sam and Tess finally meet to insult each other Having done that, they naturally tall in love and get married...

...Stone and Moore's sense of comedy appears to be extremely limited Sam has no personality whatsoever, and Harry Guardino does as little tor the part as it does for him As a comic touch, Tess is provided with some 200 names to drop, extending from Jean-Paul Sartre, Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger to Gordon Liddy and Barbara Walters Other "humorous" contributions are supposed to be furnished by a Russian dancer (Eivind Harum), a refugee from the KGB who later decides to return to his wife in the Soviet Union Except for a welcome but routine Russian dance number, he is present only to interrupt Tess and Sam's wedding night A German maid (Grace Keagy) speaks with a heavy fake accent and mixes up Colorado and avocado The coolheaded secretary to the mercurial TV star is hardly more original, but Roderick Cook plays him very well...