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| Janet Kapral, Gregory Abels. |
I LOVE THEE FREELY
[Drama/Biographical/Literature/Romance/Two Characters] A: Benjamin Bernard
Zavin; SC: works of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning; D: Moni Yakim; S/C:
Don Jensen; L: Ian Calderon; P: The Candlelight Company; T: Astor Place Theatre
(OB); 9/17/73-10/7/73 (23)
A documentary dramatization of the famed love affair of 19th-century
British poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, as expressed through a
performance of their love letters. Clive Barnes summed it up as “A quiet and unsurprising
evening, full of good taste, good sense, but lacking in dramatic substance.”
The acting—by Gregory Abels and Janet Kapral—was acceptable,
the sets attractive, and the characters “interesting.” However, the effect, for
Barnes, was “predictable” and with “more charm than depth.” Richard Watts felt
it was “entirely without dramatic interest and suspense,” and Dick Brukenfeld
wrote that it was “the kind of experience that drives people away from theatre.”
Several critics noted that they would much have preferred to
see the established theatrical treatment of the love affair, the once popular,
1930 period drama The Barretts of Wimpole
Street by Rudolf Bessier. In that somewhat musty drama they at least
could have appreciated the character of the poetess’s tyrannical father, who is completely absent from the letters.