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| Christopher Hewett, Jane Connell. |
Sheridan’s still funny 18th-century comedy of
manners was revived by the then Off-Broadway Roundabout Theatre, precisely 200 years after its London premiere, but the mounting, staged by Australian director Michael
Bawtree, was disappointing. The extensive width of the Roundabout’s new
theatre on W. Twenty-third Street (previously, and afterward, a cinema) was becoming a hindrance that critics would point to time and again. The clever device
used by Bawtree and designer Holmes Easley to somehow distract from the difficulty was a
pair of side-by-side revolving units that could bring new scenes quickly into play as
needed. However, they did little to alter the stage’s unfortunate
dimensions.
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| Cast of The Rivals. |
Bawtree’s rapid pacing and judicious cutting were noted, but
the actors were “more decent than magnificent,” wrote Clive Barnes. Walter Kerr
grumbled about the excessive volume of the voices and chastised the company for
overplaying. He liked only Richard Monette (a mainstay at Canada’s Stratford
Festival) as Jack Absolute, “precise and unruffled in his eighteenth-century
postures.” Barnes picked out not only Monette, but Christopher Hewett as Sir
Anthony, Jane Connell as Lady Malaprop, and George Pentecost as Bob Acres.
The Roundabout was moving slowly toward increasing its
presence, and these actors were all a step above those cast in earlier
Roundabout shows at their tiny venue in a supermarket basement. Others involved
included Elizabeth Owens (a Roundabout stalwart married to Roundabout founder,
Gene Feist) as Lucy, Michael Tucker (later of TV’s “L.A. Law”) as Fag, Kathleen
O’Meara Noone as Lydia Languish, John Newton a Sir Lucius O’Trigger, and so on.
