"
THEATER
0425
is an early play that shows the signs of an apprentice-at-work.
He
is
not yet the master of "less is more," nor fully in control of the spare,
suggestive line, as later in
The Caretaktr
or
The Homecoming.
Alan Schneider's direction underscored rather than concealed the
script's uncertainties, though the party scene itself was genuinely terrify–
ing and Ruth White's performance as Meg was beautifully detailed....
The best single performance of the year was by the 42-year-old English
actor Roy Dotrice in his evening-long, solo re-creation of the diarist,
John Aubrey. Dotrice's was a mesmerizing portrait of a mischievous,
learned, garrulous, dotty, charming SO-year-old, and Julia Trevelyan
Oman's
set
was - the praise could hardly be higher - equal to the
occasion.... A close second for performing honors goes to John
Colicos' eloquent, sly, tempestuous re-creation of ChurchiII in Hoch–
huth's overlong, preachy yet occasionally arresting
Soldiers.
...
Euri–
pides'
Iphigenia in Aulis,
as poignant a statement as ever made on how
circumstances control men and how war destroys the innocents, was
aided by Michael Cacoyannis' vivid inventions and by Irene Papas'
deeply felt performance. Yet the production was kept from complete
success by some weak links in the supporting cast and by Cacoyannis'
own tendency to the self-consciously theatrical gesture.... Sam Shepard's
Forensic and the Navigators
is a pastiche of avant-garde cliches.
Shepard is in love with free association, with letting one line produce
the next. At best this conveys a playful spontaneity: at its much more
frequent worst, it becomes just one damn thing after the other. . . .
I was impressed by the work of director Allen Garfield at the off-off–
Broadway Troupe Theatre Club. In one playlet, Garfield converted the
author's stage directions into an actual character, thereby making a
subtle statement about the refusal of people to respond to the needs of
others - and also not to respond. Garfield is a director to watch. . . .
Paul Foster's
Tom Paine
and the production "conceived" for the
La Mama Troupe by Tom O'Horgan were of a piece: artifice sub–
stituting for mind. There were a few humorous intervals in the script
and a few stunning devices in the direction, but the evening failed to
make anything close to an interesting statement about revolution or
/evolutionaries. And so far as I could tell, John Bakos is the only mem–
ber of the troupe with any conspicuous talent.... Wole Soyinka, Africa's
most celebrated playwright, who is presently in jail in his native Nigeria,
was unlucky in his very first production in the United States, an evening
of two short plays,
The Trials of Brother lero
and
The Strong Breed.
The sets particularly, cluttered and fussy, nullified Soyinka's at–
tempt at large-scale, almost mythic effects in
The Strong Breed.
There
were, however, some notable performances: Yvette Hawkins in a small
