THEATER
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portrayal of the mother was indeed impressive in its technical mastery,
though too often a display of technique took precedence over the un–
folding of character.
THE AMERICAN PLACE THEATER
Under Wynn Handman's leadership, the APT continues to en–
courage and produce talent unlikely to find outlets elsewhere. I saw
three of its productions this year. Each had its merits, but none reached
the level of excellence achieved in past seasons. One of the three - a
trilogy of short plays by Ed Bullins - I cannot,
in
fairness, judge; the
first two playlets, despite some germs of originality and a brilliant per–
formance by L. Errol Jaye, impressed me as unsteady in conception and
overwrought in execution, but since I had to leave the theater early,
I missed the third,
Clara's Old Man,
which I am told is by far the
most impressive of the trio.
APT's second production, Ronald Ribman's
The Ceremony of In–
nocence,
was set on the Isle of Wight in the year 1103 and dealt with
the wholly invented (historically speaking) travail of the peaceful king
Ethelred, beset and defeated by the war-mongerers surrounding him.
The production was marked by a graceful performance in the title role
by Donald Madden and some good supporting work by David Birney
(who was also impressive this season in
Summertree).
But Arthur A.
Seidelman's direction seemed to me misguided; he has a penchant for
inventing stage business which is mostly mere busyness and which ob–
scures instead of revealing the script's intentions.
Ronald Ribman has already demonstrated his talents in
Harry,
Noon and Night
and
The Journey of the Fifth Horse,
and
Ceremony
confirms his lucid intelligence and his flair for epigrammatic statement.
But he has not yet found a personal voice. While searching for it, un–
fortunately, he has, in
Ceremony,
borrowed the antique form of his–
torical drama without imbuing it with any contemporary perspective
(other than the labored thematic one of "peace or war"). Pseudo-–
Shakespearean declamations like "know this or be damned for a fool"
were embarrassing, and periodic anachronisms like Kent, in buddy
fashion, putting his hands on the King's shoulders, or Sven of Den–
mark remonstrating with his daughter to "Be a Dane! Be a Dane!"
kept me nervously wondering when the next gaff would come. Still,
Ribman is a writer of indisputable talent and hopefully he will yet find
a form to embody it.
Robert Lowell's
Endecott and the Red Cross
was in some ways
the most disappointing of APT's three productions, not least because
the company had triumphed a few seasons back with Lowell's
The Old
