THEATER CHRONICLE
SHAW AT THE PHOENIX
THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA, Bernord Show. Phoenix Theoter.
The Phoenix Theater production of
The Doctor's Dilemma
had a cast of veterans: Geraldine Fitzgerald, Shepperd Strudwick, Fred–
eric Worlock, Roddy McDowall, Philip Bourneuf. Mr. Worlock, the
eldest of the group, was celebrating his fiftieth anniversary in the
theater; Mr. McDowall, probahly the youngest, has been acting since
he was eight years old. On the average, this cast had twenty years' stage
experience. They had been seen in Shaw and Shakespeare and Ibsen
and Sophocles, in the movies and on television. They still represent,
in a curious, petrified way, the younger element-the serious element–
in the commercial theater. Their very names on a playbill are an an–
nouncement of honorable intentions on the part of the producer. But
the chief thing that struck me, watching them in
The Doctor's Dilem–
ma,
was a sort of wonder: whatever made most of these people want
to go on the stage? And what keeps them there, undiscouraged, year
after year? One is tempted to think of a conspiracy, like the medical
conspiracy described by Shaw in the play-a plot against the public,
schemed up by quack actors, quack directors, quack critics. The old
words of dispraise-ham, hack-will not do for these performers.
"Amateur" is wrong, for they are paid for what they do, and they lack,
moreover, the one quality that makes amateur performances attractive:
a certain
zeal
for acting, even if misguided. Whatever else may be said
about him, the amateur actor is always acting, with might and main.
But these professionals are not only without talent, for the most part, but
without the slightest desire to impersonate anyone or anything. They
could not, one feels, get up a charade or play Santa Claus.
If
they wish
to impersonate anything, it is to impersonate actors. Hence this produc–
tion, which had no relation to miming, was at the same time intensely
stagey. It made me think of the movie of
Julius Caesar,
where all the
busts of Caesar used in the decor repeated in a mirrored infinity Louis
Calhern's double chins.
This is a play about doctors. There are six of them in the cast, each
as pinned down by Shaw, a collector's specimen of his type: fools, by
