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| David Schramm, Mary Jane Negro. (Photo: Diane Gorodnitzki.) |
Rarely produced in
modern times, Middleton’s Jacobean melodrama of 16th-century
Florentine society was given its first professional American staging by the
young actors of the newly founded Acting Company. They produced it as part of a
six-play repertory season, their first in New York following their graduation from Juilliard.
Michael Kahn gave the
bloody play a workable staging that offered a lighter tone than Mel Gussow
would have preferred. Nonetheless, he thought it “both
accessible and entertaining.” Harold Clurman found it “ably staged and
handsomely costumed.” Dealing with deception and immorality, with nearly every
character ultimately self-seeking and perfidious, Middleton’s complexly plotted
drama proved stageworthy and pertinent in its cynical view of mankind.
Gussow pointed out
the weakness of young actors playing older parts, but “on the whole,” he
declared, “the company acts with firmness and clarity.” Clurman argued that the
company was not yet ready for so tough a work and said he missed many of their
words.
The company included
David Schramm as Leantio, Mary Joan Negro alternating with Patti LuPone as
Bianca, Kevin Kline as Guardiano, Dakin Matthews as Fabritio, Mary Lou Rosato
as Livia, Sam Tsoutsouvas as Hippolito, Leah Chandler as Isabella, David Ogden
Stiers as the Duke of Florence, Benjamin Hendrickson as the Lord Cardinal, as
well as Gerald Shaw [Guiterrez], Annie McNaughton, Jared Sakren, Cynthia
Herman, and James Moody in other roles. Many, of course, would go on to important careers on stage and screen.
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unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of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: The Wood Demon.
