John Woodvine.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
[Dramatic Revival] A: William Congreve; D: David William; S: Karen Mills; L:
Howard Eldridge; CH: Geraldine Stephenson; P: Brooklyn Academy of Music i/a/w
Brooklyn College in the Actors Company Production; T: Brooklyn Academy of Music
(OB); 2/13/74-2/24/74 (5)
This quintessential
example of Restoration comedy, one of the wittiest, if most complexly plotted,
of the genre, was produced during a four-play repertory season offered by
England’s Acting Company at BAM. Several actors who would go on to fine careers
were involved, with an especially brilliant future in store for Ian McKellen. Interestingly, this being a repertory company where the star of one production could be cast in a throwaway role in another, McKellen's character here was Lady Wishfort's footman.
David Williams’s
production moved the time frame up to turn-of-the-century England. He staged it
as it were a Wildean, rather than Congrevian, comedy. Edwardian manners
replaced Restoration ones, cutaways and top hats took over from breeches and
waistcoats, and telephone book stood in for a function once served by a
messenger. Other anachronisms included a gramophone, a chauffeur, cigarettes,
and even a few contemporary references. Some critics carped that these changes
were gratuitous.
Overall, it was
played broadly, often bordering on farce, which pleased some critics who
thought it great fun, if sometimes over the top. Mel Gussow blamed the excesses
on the actors, and Douglas Watt on the director, but both leaned toward
forgiveness. Not so Edith Oliver, who found much of the dialogue inaudible and
was vexed by the production’s “hokum.” “What Congreve would have made of it I
cannot imagine. . . . All in all, a depressing evening.”
Oliver did admire
several performances, among them Robin Ellis’s Fainall, Edward Petherbridge’s
Mirrabel, and Caroline Blakiston’s Millamant, and John Woodvine's Sir Wilful Witwoud. John Simon was less enthralled,
disliking the acting, direction, and design.
Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know,
since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog
has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off
and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an
unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of
the New York Stage series,
which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately,
the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the
project beyond 1950.
Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s
Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012
through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate
volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The
2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was
72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New
York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can
find these collections on Amazon.com by
clicking here.
Next up: We Bombed in New Haven
