On Stage

...Unlike the audience, what the doctor and pastor do not know is that Laura has deviously used what the orderly said about the maid to plant the fatal idea in her husband' smind Howcanftebecer-tain, Laura has challenged the captam, that Bertha is his daughter, that he has the nght to claim parental authority over her...

...On Stage SHREWS AND DUNCES BY LEO SAUVAGE AUOUST STRJNDBERG ' s The Father last month was given its first Broadway revival since 1949 by the Circle in the Square Theater In several ways this limited-engagement production, employing a straightforward translation by Harry G Carlson, illuminated both the strengths and weaknesses of the playwright The Father, which along with the subsequent Miss Julie and The Creditors was written during what is generally known as Stnndberg's "naturalistic" period, was completed in 1887 That same year the Theatre Libre, a bastion of naturalist drama, was launched by Andre Antoine, who the Swedish author would later say had brought "something new" to the stage possessing " strong motiveand concentrated form "Butthe words may well have been inspired by thoughts of his own work at the time The "strong motive and concentrated form" of The Father derive from Stnndberg's hatred of women and a restlessness brought on by his native country's well-ordered society Indeed, Stockholm was not ready to see the play until 1908, and all three naturalistic efforts were initially produced between 1889-93 in German at Berlin's Freie Bithne, theTeutontcanswertothe Thi-dtie Libre The Father was also performed in Pans in the fall of 1893 at the Theatre de I'Oeuvre, the showcase of Aurelian-Mane Lugne-Poe, a disciple of Antoine The play had its New York debut in 1912, the year Stnndberg died It concerns an unnamed, freethink-mg Swedish cavalry captain (Ralph Waile) having troublegettinga promotion because he is fascinated bv science and evolution That interest is a source of even greater problems with his wile, Laura (Frances Sternhagen), a pious, conventional small-town petite bourgeoise who is in reality worse than that It is uncertain exactly how the marital hostilities began Suffice it to say that the captain tnes to humiliate his wife by keeping her on a strict allowance, and she strikes at him by intercepting his mail to prevent him from receiving the scientific books he wants The tension becomes acute when the captain informs his wife that he has decided their adolescent daughter, Bertha (Kate Purwin), should finish school in the city Father and daughter love each other deeply, and Bertha is grateful for the chance to study in the city But Laura defiantly announces that she is not going to allow her child to leave home and be corrupted by the urban "atheists " Without saying so, she implies that no matter what the girl wants, under the command of the freethinking yet stiff-necked cavalry captain there still remains a semblance of a home, one that includes a grandmother and the father's faithful old nurse (lovinglv played by Pauline Flanagan) Laura's underlying motive, though, is to spite her husband, and the playwright's personal obsession ultimately spills out in a concentrated form that blunts the work's dramatic development As we know from the biographers who have chronicled Stnndberg's mental breakdowns, as well as from what he has written himself, he was morbidly suspicious about the paternity of his children In the opening scenes of The Father, Stnndberg toys with the fire burning in his disturbed mind The captain's young orderly seems responsible for getting a maid pregnant When the captain calls the orderly to account and asks him whether he is the father, the young man answers that he cannot be sure Neither before nor immediately after the incident with the orderK isan\ doubt cast on Bertha's paternm, the author has the captain in control E\ en-tuallv, however, this is lost The thought of the girl not being his ow n child dn\ es the captain to explosions ot madness, justilung the strait Mckei and the lunatic as\lum To the local doctor (\\ B Br\don) and pastor (Richard Woods), the ob-tectne witnesses in the town, the captain appears truly insane He has thrown a burning lamp at his wife and rejected his terrified daughter He has even pushed aside his motherly old nurse, the one adult woman with whom he had been on easy terms Laura tells the doctor and pastor that, without her knowing why, her husband imagines Bertha is not his child In his confusion, the captain himself confirms the very same thing, adding that his wife doesn't want to tell him the truth...

...Thus there is only one villain—the woman Stnndberg's passionate misogyny never could be remed in, and here it cuts off the possibility of developing a dramatic resource pursued and perfected by Luigi Pirandello some 35 years later Stnndberg begins with a kind of "evenhandedness"—albeit m the tendentious sense that recent misuse by politicians has given the word—as if he were preparing the way for a Piran-delhan enigma Where is the truth'' The captam, after all, is not a very much more attractive character than his wife, and he gives the impression of being as ready as she is to marshal every means available to win the battle for Bertha But then he becomes the helplessly trapped victim of his conniving, ruthless wife Laura is determined to have her husband committed to an asylum so that she can secure legal authonty over Bertha and, not incidentally, over the captain's money To mount this revival of The Father, Circle in the Square brought over Swedish director Goran Graffman Although on the whole he did a fine job, he failed to exploit the occasions offered by the text to tone down the otherwise unrelenting cruelty of the play For example, m one tender interlude the captain briefly finds peace in Laura's arms Her drive to undo him notwithstanding, at that particular pomt she would seem to be sincere—an indication of a fleeting remembrance of the days when she loved him, or even an unconscious compensation for what she is going to do to him But Graffman had Frances Sternhagen revert to poisonous Laura the instant the embrace ended, giving us the impression that her sweetness had merely been make-believe The moment lost both its overall dramatic purpose and its meaning The director not only missed an opportunity to serve the playwright, he deprived the play of a badly needed touch of humanity My quibbles aside, The Father mate for a powerful evemng at the theater We owe the Circle a debt for remmdmg us what that can be like by bringing back Stnndberg for a few weeks as we move toward the end of a rather wearying season T axe what has happened with the new tenant at the Eugene O'Neill Theater An experienced, professional, often witty playwright, aided by an ex-penenced, professional, often witty director, would seemtopromiseusan unrestrained farce—but they have failed to deliver As wntten by Neil Simon and directed by Mike Nichols, Fools borrows a basic story from international folklore, then makes it the springboard for a series of jokes a cut below those I remember from my schoolyard days when at age 12 Fools trods the same ground covered long ago in the German collection of folktales entitled Die Schildburger, and in Yiddish stones that have been collected under the title, The Wise Men of Helm The citizens of Schilda, of Helm, and now in Fools of a Russian village called Kulyenchikov, are all characterized by a trait said to be less common elsewhere—utter stupidity In Schilda, for instance, after building a City Hall without windows, they discover that it is dark inside, when they try to bring in light with buckets, it escapes despite their quickly closing the door In Kulyenchikov, when a man finishes sweeping the front of his house, he opens the door and whisks the collected dirt inside Time changes little in the world of the well-meaning dummy What Simon has contributed on his own is a reason for the foolishness of his Fools, plus an involved love story that will cure them of their problem His reason is that some 200 years ago a hearse, oranurse, orno, acurse, hit the community (in Mike Nichols staging it takes a while to clear up the confusion) As for the lovers, a newly arnved schoolteacher (John Rubenstem) and the prettiest, most stupid girl in the town (Pamela Reed), they save the day when their oft-postponed marnage breaks the curse in a final thunderous miracle Everybody in Kulyenchnikov becomes normal—that is, they go bankrupt, get rich in real estate, or are named members of the Academy of Sciences Nonsense can be irresistibly funny In Simon's play it simply isn't His conception of fun in Fools is to have the young girl call her father Mama and her mother Papa When she is on a balcony and the schoolteacher is down below, Romeo-style, she invites him to "come down here", no sooner has Rubinstein climbed up than Pamela has descended to the floor, whereupon she invites him to "come up here " Fortunately Rubinstein, who has to do this several times, is quite good at climbing balconies (John Lee Beatty's setting is more Swiss than Russian, but charming anyhow) Similarly, we are supposed to explode with laughter during Reed's first class with the schoolteacher She says she wants to learn a language He asks her which one "Rabbit hunting," she replies A single example ought to give you enough of an idea of the moldy quality of Simon's "new" jokes "Hewashitin the head by a cow," says one fool of another Question "When9" Answer "Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fndays " I can't help preferring the inane non sequitur from my schoolyears, one no doubt passed along by generations of children Two people are on a bus, and one of them asks what time it is "Thursday," the second one answers The first one jumps up and cnes, "That's where I'm getting off...