"In Lieu of Reviews"
Around 40 years ago, I began a major project that
eventuated in the publication of my multi-volume series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume covering a
decade and describing every show on and Off Broadway. For some reason now lost to the sands of time, I chose to start with the
1970s. After writing all the entries through 1975 and producing a typed
manuscript of 1,038 pages my publisher (Greenwood) and I decided it would be
best to commence with the 1920s. So the 1970-1975 material was put aside as I
produced doorstopper volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those concluded,
Greenwood decided the thing was simply too expensive and not sufficiently profitable, so
the remaining volumes were cancelled, leaving my 1970s entries in limbo.
To compensate, I used the research I’d done on the
1970s to write a book for Greenwood called Ten
Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies, which described all aspects of
that era’s theatre, onstage and off. Many years later, in 2012, I began a
post-retirement “career” as a theatre reviewer, which led to my creating this
blog as an outlet for my reviews. Over the past eight years or so, I’ve posted
nearly 1,600 reviews, a substantial number having also appeared on other
websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.
Now, however, with the New York theatre in suspension, my reviewing has come to a screeching stop. This, then, is probably the perfect time to post as
many as possible of the entries I prepared for the never-published 1970-1975
book.
The entries that will follow are in alphabetical order. Each entry has a
heading listing the subject categories of the work described, the author (A),
the director (D), the producer (P), the set designer (S), the costume designer
(C), the lighting designer (L), the source (SC), the theatre (T), the dates of
the run, and, in parentheses, the length of the run. The original entries also
contained the names of all the actors but I’ve omitted those here.
I will try to post at least one entry daily. When time
allows, I’ll provide more. The manuscript exists on fading, fragile paper and,
because no digital files exist, must be retyped. Hopefully, the tragic health
situation we’re all enduring will abate before I get too far into posting these
entries but, for the time being, devoted theatre lovers may find reading these
materials an informative, if temporary, replacement for the reviews that normally occupy this blog.
Sam Leiter
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| Keith Michell, Diana Rigg. |
ABELARD AND HELOISE [Drama/Romance/Period/British] A:
Ronald Miller; D: Robin Phillips; P: Elliot Martin, James Nederlander, George
M. Steinbrenner, III b/a/w John Gale; S: Christopher Morley; C: Daphne Dare; L:
H.R. Poindexter; SC: Helen Waddell’s novel, Peter
Abelard and the letters of Abelard and Heloise; T: Brooks Atkinson Theatre;
3/10/71-4/24/71 (53)
Abelard
and Heloise dramatized the famous twelfth-century love
story of the 37-year-old theologian and intellectual Peter Abelard (Keith
Michell) and the ravishing 17-year-old Heloise (Diana Rigg). After Heloiise
bears his baby, Abelard is castrated by thugs hired by the girl’s uncle, a
church canon, and the helpless pair determine to become monk and nun.
The play was politely received by the critics, who
found it slickly written and produced but completely unexciting from an
emotional, intellectual, or poetic point of view. “The play lacks inner
emotional dynamics,” carped Harold Clurman. Clive Barnes, who thought it “a
solid, serious play,” said it failed because it lacks the incandescence of
poetry.” Jack Kroll, however, was one who believed it to be “an engrossing,
well-crafted historical romance,” an attitude directly at variance with Martin
Gottfried’s, which held that this was “The true garbage of the stage.”
A key factor for most was the nude scene between
Michell and Rigg. Barnes said they might be “the first major stars to appear
naked on the Broadway stage.” He thought it “the most tasteful, tactful, and
apposite nude love scene I have ever encountered.” A few, though, found it either
too dimly lit to make out the actors’ bodies, and “unnecessary and silly
intrusion” (Gottfried), or simply unerotic.
 |
| Ronald Radd, Diana Rigg. |
The exquisite Ms. Rigg, who received a Tony nomination
for Best Actress, got the best acting reviews, despite her lack of “vulnerability”
(T.E. Kalem). She possessed “a gritty, voracious sensuousness. . . ,” he
remarked. Another Tony nomination went to Ronald Radd, who played Gilles de
Vannes.
The show was first done in London with some of the
same actors repeating their roles in New York.