The Theater: Old Plays in Manhattan, Nov. 5, 1956

Richard II brought London’s Old Vic to Broadway after a ten-year absence. In 1946, with Laurence Olivier’s Oedipus and to some degree Ralph Richardson’s Falstaff, it provided some of the supreme theater memories of its time. During its present stay, the Old Vic must attempt new victories; for Broadway, it is a cast of unknown names, except for cinema’s Claire Bloom.

Richard II made a less reverberant opening flourish than did Henry IV in 1946. A step backward from Henry in English history, it is also a step or two downward in Shakespearean art. Yet since the Old Vic’s current bill, unlike its earlier one, is all-Shakespearean,* this brilliant bit of early characterization, a sort of watercolorist’s Hamlet, was not necessarily ill-chosen. It was a good taking-off point to soar from. And as proof of the Old Vic’s feeling for tradition, its reaching for distinction, its high competence in production, Richard was rewarding enough. What reduced a good early work to the level of mere good workmanship was John Neville’s unsatisfying Richard. His reach, quite possibly, had butterfingered his grasp.

At the outset, in particular to a Broadway nourished on Maurice Evans’ musically wistful Richard, he seemed psychologically adventurous. He stressed the real selfishness and womanishness in so self-consciously royal, but wholly unkingly, a figure; he showed the spindly weakness behind what Coleridge called Richard’s “wordy courage.” But Actor Neville failed to deepen or sustain the role. It was not just that by wallowing in self-pity he never seemed pitiful; that might argue severity of purpose in an actor. Unhappily, he never seemed sick, or contemptible, or tragic either. He merely seemed elaborate. He turned rhetoric into verbosity and Richard’s self-dramatizations into theatrics of his own.

Neville’s performance noticeably hurt what is a kind of violin concerto of a play, with its alternations of the martial and the lyrical, of action and reaction, of brass-choired public spectacles and sad-fiddled private woes. The big scenes were for the most part handsomely played; in the rise and fall of Kings there were actors who could do rich justice to the king’s English, and the Bard’s, and Director Michael Benthall contrived much regal flow and movement.

Romeo and Juliet also had its points but was not very successful as a whole. Claire Bloom’s Juliet was beguilingly youthful to look at; she had her moments of poetry, of awakening ardor and awakened passion. But she mixed talent with tediousness, was too mannered, too slow-paced, seemed half a Juliet really in love with Romeo, half an actress merely in love with her role. In that tender trap of a part—Romeo—Actor Neville was sometimes graceful, but, as with his Richard, never simple enough, and, like too many other Romeos, never real. For all its verbal magic the play itself is far from a dramatic blessing. It is not among Shakespeare’s true tragedies, but only his Tragedy of Errors; the triumphant embodiment of Romeo and Juliet is less Shakespeare’s play than Berlioz’ music.

On its brawling and festal side, this Romeo was well done. There was some individuality but little lure to Paul Rogers’ Mercutio, some novelty but too much license to Wynne Clark’s Nurse. What held both productions together, for all their want of urgency and luster, was a frequent feeling for the eloquence of verse, a certain knowledge of the architecture of scenes.

*Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida.