The following precedes each entry,
"In Lieu of Reviews"
Around 40 years ago, I
began a major project that eventuated in the publication of my multivolume
series, The Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, each volume
covering a decade. 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 volumes for 1920-1930, 1930-1940, and 1940-1950. With those
concluded, Greenwood decided it was all 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
postretirement “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 first appeared on other
websites: Theater Pizzazz, The Broadway Blog, and Theater Life.
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Now, however, with the New
York theatre in suspension, and my reviewing completely halted, 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 follow are in alphabetical
order. Each entry has a heading listing the subject categories of the work
described: the author (A), the director (D), additional staging (ADD ST), when
credited; 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 informative.
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| Trish Van Devere, Robert Christian. |
In 1924,
Eugene O’Neill’s tragic view of a racially mixed marriage (a metaphor for the
doomed liaison between his own mother and father—both white, of course—whose names
the couple bear—was a work of shocking proportions, especially when its white
heroine kissed the hand of its black hero. O’Neill’s treatment of miscegenation
had little pertinence remaining, however, other than its historical importance,
when given this first New York revival at the city’s leading O’Neill theatre,
51 years later.
The
dramatist’s depiction of blacks was awkward and poorly observed, and his
characters seemed more like “labels instead of characters,” said Douglas Watt.
Watt blamed the play for its “crude outline and clumsy . . . speech,” and Clive
Barnes cringed at its datedness, “patronizing” tone, and “bad writing.” Martin
Gottfried saw no reason for bringing back this “curiosity,” and John Simon
spurned it as “abysmal claptrap.”
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| Robert Christian, Trish Van Devere. |
Just as
bad was the production, with star actor George C. Scott, making his directorial
debut, at the helm. “Why must this absorbing actor insist on becoming a dreary
director,” queried Simon. Scott’s then wife, Trish Van Devere, in her Broadway debut, was embarrassingly ineffectual as Ella, while Robert Christian’s Jim was merely adequate. (Scott had planned an earlier version, in the late 60s, with James Earl Jones in the lead but it went nowhere.)
David Sheward, in his Scott biography, Rage and Glory, reports that Scott and Devere "brought their offstage conflicts into their professional lives." He quotes Van Devere's understudy, Judith Barcroft:
I thought she was very difficult to direct. He wanted her to use the maternal side of herself. There was a scene where Ella is supposed to hold a straw doll. He wanted her to hold the doll and rock it. But she didn't want to go near it.
They had a tremendous fight just before opening and she left the theatre. So I had to go on. I didn't have any rehearsals and I'd never even been backstage before. The hairdresser led me around. But my husband was a stage manager and he had told me an understudy should always be prepared. I went on and got bravos.
The
remainder of the cast, aside from Vickie Thomas as Hattie, the hero’s sister,
was even less appreciated than the leads. On the other hand, the lighting was good enough to
land Thomas Skelton a Tony nomination.
Previous entries:
Abelard
and Heloise
Absurd
Person Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats” and “Line”
The
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Aesop’s
Fables
Ain’t
Supposed to Die a Natural Death
Alice
in Wonderland
