DON JUAN IN HELL
 |
| Edward Mulhare, Ricardo Montalban, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Henreid. |
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New
York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and
revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
DON JUAN IN HELL [Dramatic Revival] A:
George Bernard Shaw; D: John Houseman; P: Lee Orgel and William J. Griffiths; T:
Palace Theatre; 1/15/73-2/4/73 (24)
Act Three of Shaw’s Man and Superman, ever since its
successful 1951 Broadway presentation as an independent play, has been a mildly
popular concert drama for name actors to perform in formal dinner clothes on a
bare stage against a neutral background, using lecterns and microphones.
Present in this touring version was Agnes Moorehead, who resumed playing Dona
Ana, former mistress of Don Juan (Ricardo Montalban), which she’d done in the
1951 original.
Dona Ana and Don Juan, along with Dona
Ana’s father, the Commander (Paul Henreid), and the Devil (Edward Mulhare), are
conjured up in a dream by John Tanner in the play surrounding Act Three. The quartet’s
witty, philosophical debate on various subjects provides enough verbal meat for
four top actors to chomp on zestfully, but the present company, for all their previous
accomplishments, was not entirely suited to the task.
Several reviewers, including Clive
Barnes and Martin Gottfried, attacked Shaw’s inflated writing, while others,
like T.E. Kalem, considered the piece a “dazzlingly sustained discussion of
ideas in dialogue.” Kalem singled out Montalban as being “superb, no libertine
at all, but Shaw incarnate,” and John Simon and Richard Watts supported the
view that Montalban’s was the finest performance. However, a good number of
others believed him to be inadequate, Barnes, for one, calling his delivery “monotonous.”
Previous entries:
Abelard and Helo/ise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line
The Chronicle of Henry VI: Part 1, Part
II,
The Circle
Clarence Darrow
Cold Feet
Conditions of Agreement
Coney Island Cycle
The Constant Wife
The Contractor
The Contrast
The Constant Wife
The Country Girl
Crazy Now
The Creation of the
World and Other Business
Creeps
The Crucible
Crystal and Fox
Cyrano
Dames at Sea
The Dance of Death
Dance wi’Me/Dance with
Me
A Day in the Life of
Just about Everyone
Dear Nobody
Dear Oscar
The
Desert Song
Diamond
Studs
Different
Times
The Dirtiest
Show in Town
The
Divorce of Judy and Jane
Do It
Again!
Doctor Jazz
A Doll’s
House (2)
Don Juan
