Lively Classics

...e thatsheisthe mother of his child—he will "love her dearly ever, ever dearly " Several commentators have advanced the audacious theory that Helena is a prototype for the independent, unblinking, resolute "new woman" Hen-nk Ibsen introduced to the European stage some 300 years later I would argue that although the spunkv orphan does take the initiative in hunting down her man, no Ibsenian, post-Ibsenian, or para-Ibsenian woman would want to capture a skunk like Bertram Indeed, the real problem with All's Hell Thai Ends Well is that it ends badly—not tragically, comically or tragicomicalK, merely annovinglv and distastefully Helena should have given Bertram the boot Trevor Nunn, in discussing the play with the press before it opened, insisted on Ibsen, on social meaning, on Shakespeare's "message In one interview he went so tar as to call the work deeply humanist " It the risk of paying Nunn a compliment he would not fully relish, 1 must say that his production is so enjoyable precisely because its spurt is untouched by these highbrow attitudes In any case, if Nunn intended to treat Helena as a feminist heroine, I didn't notice it He does cleverly modify the denouement in a way that makes his leading woman appear less love-sick and submissive than Shakespeare originally depicted her, yet without bringing her any closer to Nora Helmer As the uneasily united spouses turn to walk toward the upstage exit, they drift a little further apart with each step they take By the time they disappear, they look from the back like two strangers Perhaps, we infer, in the final analysis Helena is not such a lovelorn fool, and all's not so well as promised Nunn's most unexpected innovation, considering his weighty words, is his decision to approach the play playfully—as a divertissement, or, with Guy Woolfenden's nicely arranged music, almost an operetta A wonderfully serious marching band, for instance, maneuvers in studied circumvolutions to mark the victory of the Duke of Florence's troops over whomever they were fighting Equally delightful is Helena's manner of expressing her single-minded, darkly flaming passion right before the King grants her Bertram's hand In a hghthearted musical game, she dallies consecutively with each member of a circle of noblemen until, all the others having been eliminated, her true love stands alone as the unwilling victor Undoubtedly, if this pageant bears any message at all, it is the medium With the help of John Gunther's multipurpose setting and a fantastic collection of costumes by Lindy Hemming and Linda Fisher, Nunn has given the whole affair a timeless and placeless air that is sometimes close to surrealism Judging from the Italians' uniforms and the French aviators with goggles and boots, we are in the era that preceded World War I Still, it seems irrelevant to wonder what the King of France and the Duke of Florence are doing there The play itself, after all, is not exactly a model of historical accuracy To cite one of its numerous errors, the Counts of Roussillon (not, as Shakespeare had it, Rossilhon), a province bordering Languedoc to the south, seceded from France in the 12th century and did not return until 1659 In the Bard's day their allegiance was to Spamsh Aragon As for the large supporting cast, it moves surefootedly on a consistently professional level Curiously, only Harriet Walter as the fighting Helena and Phillip Franks as the caddish Bertram have trouble keeping their balance Perhaps they got mixed up by reading some of Nunn's statements in the newspapers Most notable is Stephen Moore's handling of Parolles, a boastful, cowardly rascal who Shakespeare obviously hoped could provide All's Well That Ends Well with some of the big laughs Falstaff added to The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaffian parts, even though actors love them, are not easy, the line between letting oneself go and hamming it up is extremely thin The role of Parolles is also difficult for two other reasons Unlike Falstaff, he is not a central character whose place in the story is well defined, and besides the boisterous episodes, there is a rather cruel one where the joke, extended and detailed by the director, involves fake executions—nothing to laugh at in the 20th century Watching Moore, I couldn't quite decide whether he was marvelous or overdoing it a little Probably both, and probably that makes him a perfect Parolles—one more factor in the evening's success There are a few slightly redundant scenes in Show Boat, and the second act contains some excessive sentimentalities that, regrettably, are underlined by Michael Kahn's direction of the current revival at the Uns Theater All the same, the return of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's 1927 musical to Broadway triumphantly confirms its stature as a masterpiece of a specifically American genre Kern probably wanted to write a grand opera What he came up with, using the script Hammerstein adapted from a novel by Edna Ferber, turned out to be of much more consequence to the American theater Actually, the show's structure harkens back to the Viennese operetta The tradition of a plot revolving around two couples?one "serious," one "comical"—is maintained, as is the rule of justifying musical variations by shifting the action between a few clearly distinguished locations and groups of people But its form notwithstanding, the conception of Show Boat has nothing to do with Imperial Austria The Hapsburg palaces give way to a levee at Natchez The drawing room of theCountessisreplacedbythedecksof the Cotton Blossom as it floats on the Mississippi Most significantly of all, the romanticized gypsies yield to black stevedores who are somewhat unreahs-tically drawn, too, yet are plainly identifiable And everything suddenly acquires meaning One scene that must have been courageously shocking in 1927 involves a white man whose "passing" mulatto wife is about to be arrested for miscegenation—a punishable offense in Mississippi long after the Civil War, or for that matter World War II In a starthng-ly direct and moving gesture, he cuts his spouse's finger and drinks a drop from the wound so that he can swear they both have negro blood The expert old pro Donald O'Connor is highly welcome as Andy, the captain of the boat and of the show, especially since he gives us a brief sample of his famous tap dancing He is surrounded by an excellent ensemble of singers, most of whom are good actors as well One of these dual-talented individuals is Lonette McKee, who according to the program is the first real mulatto woman to play the humiliated wife Another is Sheryl Woods, in the role of Andy's daughter Magnolia, who unfortunately falls in love with a gambler Paige O'Hare and Paul Keith are appropriately juicy as the comic duo The most eagerly anticipated and beautifully satisfying moment in this often enchanted evening, though, comes with Bruce Hubbard's singing of "Ol' Man River...

...On Stage LIVELY " CLASSICS BY LEO SAUVAGE t has always been understood that All's Well That Ends Well belongs, at least as much as Troilus and Cressida, to the category of Shakespeare's "unpleasant plays " Unpleasant it is indeed, not only because of the awkward starting point and story development, but thanks to some far from charming peculiarities of the two mam characters Shakespeare himself apparently didn't value the work too highly He is believed to have discarded one version of it altogether, and the draft he decided to keep was never performed prior to its publication in the 1623 Folio, seven years after the playwright's death In fact, no production is on record before 1741, and of the few that theatrical histories note since then, none is regarded as memorable The ability of London's Royal Shakespeare Company to draw out of this script a remarkably pleasant evening at Broadway's Martin Beck Theater is, then, a considerable achievement—even if director Trevor Nunn may feel his production is successful for the wrong reasons First, though, the play Helena, orphaned daughter of a famous physician, has been adopted by the Countess of Rossillion She iS madly in love with the Countess' son, Bertram, who unfortunately for her dreams only of the Court in Pans Accordingly, Helena looks for ways to ensnare him It just so happens that she has inherited one of her father's mysterious potions, and that the King of France is suffering from a no less mysterious disease Helena succeeds in being received by His Majesty, and convinces him to take her elixir, which cures him The King rewards her with a ring and a pledge to bestow upon her the husband of her choice This, naturally, is Bertram, who obeys his sovereign resentfully, thinking it outrageous that the Count of Rossillion should be ordered to marry a commoner Immediately after the wedding, Bertram leaves to enlist in the army of the Duke of Florence, sending Helena home with a letter that declares he will not recognize her as his wife until she has his ring and his child—that is, in his snobbish mind, never Helena, however, doesn't give up She pretends to go on a pilgrimage, and spreads the news that she has died along the way Actual K, she is following Bertram to Florence When he suddenly falls so in love with a local widow's daughter named Diana that heentrusts her with the venerated aristocratic ring against the promise of an hour behind her bed curtains, his jilted wife is there to take advantage of the situation Helena gives Diana the King's ring in exchange for Bertram's, and Diana, who wishes to keep her virginity, willingly allows Helena to take her place at the rendezvous in the darkened chamber Theplot comes from the Decameron, and in Boccaccio's context the climax may be funny In Shakespeare's it is not Bertram, having covered himself with glory in the Florentine wars, returns to the royal seat in Pans The King, believing Helena dead, is about to remarry the young Count to the daughter of one of his noblemen when suddenly Bertram is forced to confront the two women of his past in rapid succession Diana arrives first, telling the Monarch her story in a way that seems to leave Bertram no choice but to marry her At this point, enters Helena two months pregnant, with ring and letter in hand The conclusion that all ends well is pronounced by Bertram in couplet form, as he vows that if Helena can prove "this clearly...