Monday, July 20, 2020

227. HE THAT PLAYS THE KING. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Tony Church, Ssan Fleetwood, Ian Richardson, Robin Weatherall, Mike Gwilym.
HE THAT PLAYS THE KING [Dramatic Revue/British/Literature] AD: Ian Richardson; M: Guy Woolfenden; P: Brooklyn Academy of Music b/a/w the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the RSC Production; T: Brooklyn Academy of Music (OB); 3/29/75-4/6/75 (8)

The Royal Shakespeare Company of England, which visited New York with some regularity in the 70s, usually included one of its dramatic anthologies in its repertoire. The present one—which I've called, a bit awkwardly, a “dramatic revue”—was arranged by leading player Ian Richardson for a cast of four: himself, Tony Church, Susan Fleetwood, and Mike Gwilym, plus a musician. Unlike earlier efforts in the genre, it dispensed with reading from selected passages in favor of enacted scenes, albeit with scripts in hand to suggest the incomplete nature of the theatrics involved.

The material, dealing with kingship, was drawn from Shakespeare’s history plays and tragedies, and included bits from Henry V, Richard II, Henry IV, Henry VI, Richard III, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, and King John. History predominated in Part One, tragedy in Part Two. The quartet of players ranged through selections that John Simon found “obvious and unimaginatively put together,” but that Edith Oliver called “just about perfect and beautifully meshed.” “These four actors, she enthused, “did not simply switch roles, they metamorphosed.”

The actors wore evening clothes and used a bare set with several benches and chairs for variety in blocking. A red velvet curtain hung at the rear. Only a skull and gold crown were used for props. The single other technical element of note was the running musical and sound effect commentary provided from the side of the stage by musician Robin Weatherall.