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LETTER FROM NEW YORK .\ The place is East 4th Street, directly in front of the ANTA Washington Square Theatre. The time is eleven o'clock of a June evening} just after a performance of Marco Millions. A Drunk, who had been supporting a lamppost, lurches toward a Young Man who emerges from the theatre and turns east toward Broadway. The Drunk: Lovely evening. Young Man hands him a quarter. The Drunk: (in hot pursuit) How'd you like the play? Young Man: You've got a hole in your pocket. You dropped your quarter. The Drunk: Thanks. But you didn't tell me how you liked the play. Young Man: I was in the play. I didn't like it. When I overheard this conversation, I thought This is what Joyce would have called an epiphany. For it very neatly summed up a lot of things I had been feeling about the New York season-a season in which a public, not all of it drunken, stayed away from the theater in droves-though always wishing it well; and a season in which altogether too many American actors seemed to muddle through a lot of performances which made neither them nor their audiences happy. It was perhaps ironical that my epiphany should have taken place in front of the building housing the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, for that company had very expensively been assembled in the hopes of providing a Cure for the mediocre playwrighting, the mediocre direction, and the mediocre acting which gives Broadway such a bad name. The new company, we were all told well in advance of its opening, would demonstrate what wonders could be accomplished if a carefully-selected group of actors and directors were allowed to work together as a unit. Before its first performances, there was a good deal of talk about the Lincoln Center company providing an American "answer" to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, the British National Theatre, and the Comedie-fran<;aise. Well, we all know now what its first season produced: a monumentally pretentious production of a rather slight O'Neill play; an 223 224 MODERN DRAMA September arty-if not always artful-treatment of Arthur Miller's After the Fall, a play which, it seems to me, was rushed into production before Miller had really gotten his script into balance; and a heavy-handed treatment of S. N. Behrman's But For Whom Charlie. Newspaper critics, perhaps trying to be kind, discussed in some detail O'Neill's "failings" and Arthur Miller's "bad taste." Yet the really serious problems that beset Lincoln Center's repertory company have very little to do with the dramas that opened its first season. Though hardly models of adventurous theater, each of the plays could and should have been theatrically effective. And once in a while they were effective. The Behrman play came to life in all of David Wayne's scenes and the Miller play-the most carefully produced of the group and in terms of audience-reaction the most powerful-came to life in Barbara Lowden's scenes with Jason Robards Jr. The real problems that plague the company seem therefore to involve artistic standards-particularly in the areas of casting and direction. If the press reports were true that literally thousands of actors had been interviewed before casting had been completed, then one can only conclude that either extraordinarily strange choices were made for the company finally put together or that there is something extraordinarily wrong with the training of American actors . For with the notable exceptions of the three actors I have named, the rank and file of the Lincoln Center company solves problems of interpretation not through intelligent use of their voices and their bodies but rather through a combination of hamming and hollering that simply has to be heard to be believed. The hollering of the supporting actors may perhaps be a product of their experience. For most American actors these days serve their apprenticeship not in the theater but instead in television, in motion pictures, and in radio. In all of these media, power is gained through delicate effects-a raised eyebrow, for example, or an intense whisper. Broad gestures and big volume are simply self-defeating in close-up situation. Unless these actors have accidentally been trained in voice production, they are likely, when they hit a large house, simply to yell. Lincoln Center's supporting company yelled. But they also-or at least a good many of them-indulged in a rather special kind of hamming. Let's name it: method hamming. I don't for a minute want to suggest that there are not good "method" actors. I've always assumed that the sort of fierce beauty Uta Hagen brought to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a product of modified "method." But not all of the products of the Actor's Studioor of those other schools loosely modelled on it or even of Miss Hagen's own school-have either Uta Hagen's native talent or her own early training. All too often, looking for a primary key to 1964 LETfER FROM NEW YORK 225 acting in the psychological investigation of character, mediocre "method" actors produce nothing more satisfactory than broad imitations of other "method" actors. I have in mind all of the actors who specialize in James-Dean-type lurching runs, Marlon-Brando-asStanley -Kowalski-type, slack-body howls (the "Stella!" heard round the world), and Lee-Cobb-as-Willie-Loman-type sore-foot shuffles. In this year's Lincoln Center repertory-though it's not really a "method" company-there was a good deal of this special sort of hamming. Perhaps the most interesting examples of it were to be found in the performances given by Zohra Lampert who, as Felice, a minor role in Miller's play, and as Princess Kukachin, the female lead in Marco Millions, managed to imitate not just one but something closer to half-a-dozen method performances. I can only speculate about the processes which led to her assignment in these parts. She may have been cast because she looked right for them. (Visual type-casting of this sort seems, incidentally, to dominate the company: the actors are always, physically, everything the parts demand.) She may have been cast because she was able to produce tears on demand. (Ever since Jose Ferrer-to great critical acclaim-exited weeping from The Shrike, actors and actresses have been capping each other's weeping scenes. In the O'Neill play, Miss Lampert may set the all-time record, sniffling mightily for a good fifteen minutes. At one point on the night I saw her emote, she got such a good flow going that for awhile it looked as if there would be puddles on the stage.) But good looks and good tears are hardly the criteria of good acting, and unfortunately when Miss Lampert is not weeping or striking dramatic poses, she is tearing all sorts of passions into all sorts of tatters. I rather tentatively decided that in Marco Millions she was using a peculiar adenoidal whine for the delivery of her lines because she thought Chinese princesses sounded that way. (Joseph Wiseman, in other respects a fine actor, had also settled on a fake Chinese accent-which put both him and Miss Lampert in strange contrast to David Wayne's splendid unaccented and un-hoked-up characterization.) But in the Miller play-in an altogether different sort of role-Miss Lampert managed to produce almost precisely the same kinds of sounds she had produced as Princess Kukachin. She was, I finally realized, in both instances simply playing variations of herself: a wildly cheerful variation in the Miller play and a wildly lugubrious variation in the O'Neill. And on those variations she was imposing her collected imitations. Perhaps ham acting of this sort originates because the actors have insufficient training in the real fundamentals of theater: voice pro- 226 MODERN DRAMA September duction, movement, focus ("listening" to other actors). They begin, as it were, at the wrong end of a very technical art-struggling with the psychology of character before they have any real notion how to make voice and body achieve their purposes. As a result-in spite of fine theory-they are often at a loss the moment they get beyond type casting, voices and bodies flailing about wildly in efforts to "motivate" characters who are often larger than life and so uncongenial to a naturalistic interpretation. Actors and actresses of this sort, who get by comfortably in drawing room comedy or barnyard realism, have a dreadful time when eloquence is demanded of them. For eloquence does not come naturally. It is a product of art. It is an achieved thing. What such actors-trained in an acting style which reduces character to the personality of the actor rather than in an acting style which stretches the equipment of the actor to encompass an altogether different "character" from his own-what such actors frequently substitute for eloquence is simple rant. And if they don't fall back on rant, they more often than not settle on a queer kind of underplaying-method mousiness-that lets them shrivel Lear, Hamlet, or Macbeth to the comfortable limits of their own sweet selves. (I recall, for instance, Colleen Dewhurst's coy and kittenish Cleopatra which the summer before last was on view in Central Park's handsome outdoor Shakespeare-in-the-Park theater. Miss Dewhurst , who in naturalistic drama has no difficulties at all in adjusting a character to her own needs, seemed to be unable to turn Cleopatra into anything more than an upper-middle-class suburban seductress . And though she wasn't wearing them, I found myself mentally costuming her in stretch pants, setting her down in front of a smouldering fireplace, handing her a cocktail shaker, and saying "go, girl, go!" For we all know Miss Dewhurst's Cleopatra very well. Who doesn't recognize her at every New Year's party, to the ladies a threat, to the men a vivacious, bulging lure? But would Shakespeare's Mark Antony recognize her? In the words of Eliza Doolittle, not bloody likely.) What repertory can do was, on the other hand, brilliantly displayed last season when the Royal Shakespeare Company showed its wares at the newly-constructed New York State Theatre. By now all of the reports must be in on Paul Scofield's stark Lear, a cold treatment of the character that was absorbing, powerful, disconcerting. (One friend of mine remarked that in fifty years of looking at Shakespeare, he for the first time felt real sympathy for Goneril and Regan: "If Lear and his mob of brawling bums came charging into my house that way, I'd want to throw 'em out, too!") But is was for me in The Comedy of Errors that the Royal Shakespeare Company really 1964 LEITER FROM NEW YORK 227 showed its mettle. For in a brilliant amalgam of ballet and broad farce, the Stratford company effectively Iinked-one suspects in much the same way Shakespeare·s own company might have-those elements of sentimental romance and slapstick comedy which to some profes.. sional critics have always seemed to pull the play apart. It is ballet, in fact. which gets this production underway. In an opening whirlwind dance. the actors costume themselves before the audience's eyes. thereby quickly and efficiently establishing the nature of comic "unreality ." For Clifford Williams. the play's director, realizes that farce of this sort demands that the actor play always a double role: his role in the play, and another role, that of the actor who slips in and out of character to chat confidentially with the audience. In the Royal Shakespeare Company production. farcical elements repeatedly remind us that we are watching a play, that the actors have taken us into their confidence, that we are secret participants in all of the goings on up in front of us. Perhaps because we are turned into collaborators of this sort, we have no difficulties in accepting the nevernever -land sentimental plot that envelopes the farce. a plot in which an otherwise-doomed father finds last-minute joy in rediscovered sons and a recovered wife he has long given up as dead. In production, this sentimental plot-which is played straight-glides smooth as oil over the wild froth of the ploes comic intricacies. All seas are finally calmed, all comic tempests stilled. Life's errors resolve into enduring affection, into a love that dispels illusion and that ultimately accepts as miraculous reality itself. To bring off this double structure takes-on the company·s part-marvelous technique, miracles of accurate timing. What I am really recommending. of course. is that American actors and directors go to school at performances of this sort, thatswallowing their pride-they try to learn a little about the machinery of their craft. If ever there were a year for such an education, this was obviously the one. For in the first half of the season. British imports must have set some sort of a record. Just to mention the high spots. there was Alan Badel in The Rehearsal, Albert Finney in Luther, and a whole cast of fine actors in Chips with Everything. There were, in fact, so many imports and so many imported actors that an autumn meeting of Actors Equity was literally brought to a standstill by loud complaints about producer's "discrimination" against American actors. In view of this sort of a reaction, it is probably unrealistic to expect American actors to turn to British models. Where, then, can they look? Where can they learn what they ought to know if they wish to avoid the "discrimination" of producers who may only be discriminating between good acting and bad? 228 MODERN DRAMA September They can learn quite a bit in some American schools. If they're lucky, they can also learn a great deal more from directors who demand a high level of technical competence. A fine example last year of what could be accomplished by a willing cast and a brilliant director was Circ1e-in-the-Square's off-Broadway production of The Trojan Women. Solving most of the really serious problems in Euripides' play in choreographic terms, Michael Cacoyannis first taught his actors how to move and then, collaborating with chorusmaster Erin Martin, taught those who didn't know how, how to speak. (It's only fair to add that in a cast which included Jane White, Joyce Ebert, Carolyn Coates, and Alan Mixon, he had excellent material to work with-and in Jane White an actress who lifts beyond excel· lence to something that borders on the phenomenal. That she is herself a teacher of acting gives one real hope for the profession.) Another place American actors and directors might turn for training in theatre-craft is to the dance, for we're lucky enough to have available in New York two extraordinary companies: Martha Graham's and George Ballanchine's. Though their methods are different , their achievement has one thing in common: a polished and powerful theatricality. Because literally every gesture is made to count, because every action on stage is related to every other action, because the entire design is always planned for a coherent audienceimpact , the audience is always involved. Of course both companies can achieve this involvement only through razor-sharp precision-a precision that seems to the delighted spectators effortless. In masterpieces such as Miss Graham's Clytemnestra, for example, fragments of the Greek legend project a dreaming Clytemnestra into an examination-and finally into a resolution-of her life. And though many members of the audience may be baffled by the significance of some of the danced events, they are all, I think, caught up by them into exactly that fusion of pity and terror which in Greek tragedy is supposed to purge the spectator, which is supposed to send him from the theater refreshed and humbled. That Miss Graham's kind of dance theater works its magic without words does not for a moment make it any less dramatic., (It may, indeed, gain in intensity. As a character in one of Yeats's plays remarks, "I wanted a dance because where there are no words there is less to spoil.") Raw dramatic power is also frequently the consequence of Ballanchine 's eloquent choreography and his company's clean discipline. Even in the most abstract works-in Four Temperaments where delicate , fragile touches give way to driving leaps; in Episodes, where abrupt and comic sensuality breaks in on elaborate designs of arms and legs-there is always a theatrical power which instantly com- 1964 LETTER FROM NEW YORK 229 municates itself to the audience. And in the more conventionallyplotted ballets-the ominous threats of La Valse, the dark passions of Orpheus-that audience is dominated by enormously-compelling dramatic forces. Who in his right mind could not conclude that if Ballanchine were not fully occupied in his role as the world's greatest choreographer, he would be capable of accomplishing triumphs of direction on the legitimate stage? For when all is said and done, it is really as a kind of listening choreographer that the great director brings off his finest effects. He arranges into coherence all the disparate forces of light and space, of body and voice, of theme and feeling. In this arrangement, his most important instruments are actors. If he is lucky, they come to him well trained. If he is very lucky, he may find himself in a position to train a company to his own needs-as Ballanchine and Graham have been able to train their dancers. If he is luckiest of all, he will get a theater built to his own specification-as Lincoln Center 's New York State Theatre-that lovely theater for dance-has been built to Ballanchine's. Because so many of the ingredients of a successful company are open to it, incoherent as it is, the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre seems likely to offer us our best hope for a really important American theater company. For if the flexible and efficient Washington Square theater-its "temporary" location-is used as a model for the uptown permanent theater, the company will have the finest building in the city. If the strongest members of the present company remain with it, it will have in David Wayne and Barbara Lowden an actor and an actress capable of great variety and great power. If it can bring to its announced training school really first-rate-not just famous-teachers, it might even rival the distinguished dance theater which will stand nearby. In the meantime, it can do nothing but improve. Perhaps simple proximity to dancers and musicians will rub off onto the Lincoln Center actors some of the technical know-how they are so much in need of. Perhaps they will drop in on rehearsals of the dance company -and will learn there to value fundamentals more than the glittering surface effects which now seem most important to them. By fundamentals, I mean, of course, the sorts of things that are learned by looking into mirrors rather than into motives, by working with tape recorders rather than with tensions. I can visualize such actors recklessly going so far as to practice vowel sounds, breath control , body movement, and facial gestures. I can even imagine them learning to relax a little their earnest search for psychological motivation . For motive is the one ingredient of theater that the Lincoln 230 MODERN DRAMA September Center company has to spare. All of the characterizations in last year's botched productions were, Lord knows, motivated to the hilt. But those productions were also, in the words of a lady who sat behind me on the night I saw Marco Millions, "worse than anything we ever put on in Omaha High School." Since it has plenty of money-supplied by the city's best fund· raisers, a pretty home in the theater-district suburbs, and some of the most talented neighbors in the world, the Company can look forward to a long and let us all hope happy career. It will be interesting to see-in a year or two-just what it will be able to make of itself. JOHN UNTERECKER ...

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