THEATER
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scenes, is more a phrasemaker than a playmaker. On that level, he
performs with undeniable brilliance. Even so, the play is, finally, un–
satisfying; both the script and the manner in which it was staged in
New York, suffered from confusions in point of view and tone. The
Hamlet interludes were particularly uncertain, in part because the actor
playing Hamlet confused effeminacy with elegance, in part because the
director, unable to decide if he wanted to stage the courtiers as still
lifes from a tapestry or as individuals, settled for an exaggeration of
movement that was neither. Stoppard, moreover, fails to focus the
characters of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They simply alternate
between idiocy and sagacity and, because Stoppard's insistent verbal
cleverness always dilutes the idiocy and his straining after epigrammatic
insights always compromises the sagacity, we are left with the impres–
sion that he was either unclear about his own intentions or lacked
the skill and control to execute them.
ARTHUR MILLER, THE PruCE
I had mixed feelings about Miller's new play, but on the whole
thought better of it than most reviewers did. It is, as many have said,
moralistic, talky and frequently contrived. The production, moreover,
is uneven. Boris Aronson has created a remarkable set, and there are
arresting, idiosyncratic performances by Kate Reid and Harold Gary;
but Pat Hingle, in the central role of Victor, veers uncertainly in his
characterization, even to his accent, which slurs from Irish to Soutli–
ern. Despite these inadequacies, and they do seriously compromise the
evening, I was impressed by Miller's intermittent insights ("we invent
ourselves to wipe out what we know") and moved by the plays central
dilemma: "who's to take care of the helpless old father?" Such a
theme, concerned as it is with retesting the boundaries of personal obli–
gation, has seemed to many merely old-fashioned. In terms of current
taste it is, but when that shifts, as it must, Miller's subtle inquiries will
be more fully appreciated.
HAIR,
BOOK AND LYRICS
BY
GEROME RAGNI AND JAMES RAno,
MUSIC
BY
GALT MACDERMOTT
I don't
think
Hair,
either in its original form at the Public Theater
or in Tom O'Horgan's considerably revised version for Broadway, war–
ranted all the hoopla. Certainly the cast - in both productions–
knocked itself out and, with a few exceptions, seemed comfortable with
hippie trappings (the exceptions were more notable in the Broadway
production: Lynn Kellogg, a cool showgirl type, was badly miscast, as
was the comparatively aged coauthor James Rado in the key role of
