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| Grayson Hall, Fran Brill, Ronald Drake, Michael Goodwin. (Photo: Martha Swope.) |
There were few
critical voices protesting this revival of British author James
M. Barrie’s (Peter Pan) sentimental
1908 play about a wonderfully shrewd though plain young Scotswoman, Maggie
Wylie (Fran Brill). Maggie keeps to the background, yet, in her quiet, giving way,
controls the destiny of the penniless man she agrees to marry, the politically
ambitious but fatuous John Shand (Michael Goodwin). The comedy demonstrated an
intrinsic charm that even a less-than-inspiring performance failed to dim.
Clive Barnes,
describing he work as “a prime example of the bad well-made play,” nevertheless
claimed its craftsmanship was “very respectable.” It was the work’s vapidity that
irked him to the point of pronouncing it “stillborn as a modern classic.” John
Simon, however, loved its canny contrivances, sweetness “laced with bitter
cognizance,” and timely viewpoint.
Gene Feist’s direction—rarely appreciated—was straightforward and unimaginative, but it allowed the play to emerge on its own terms, without intrusive frills. Edith Oliver said the period feeling was intact in the simple, direct mounting. The sets and costumes were attractive, but the acting was a bit bumpy, particularly when it came to the required Scotch burrs.
Fran Brill was too pretty and
charming for the dowdy, charmless Maggie—a charge that could be leveled at
other stars in the role, like Maude Adams and Helen Hayes—but her performance
was superior to those of her supporting company. Those thespians included Jeff Rubin, Jack Bittner, Ron Frazier, Susan
Tabor, Ronald Drake, and, perhaps the best known, Grayson Hall.
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unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of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: What the Wine-Sellers Buy.
