Canadian Film Weekly (Jul 13, 1960)

July 13, 1960 Stratford Festival Wi Ve 4 if i 4 i} JUDGING FROM the varied and conflicting professional reactions to the plays, players and supplementary theatrical arts at Stratford this season, drama criticism is a highly personal matter. Since the drama critic operates in the Township of Drama, County of Art, Province of Opinion (“Opinion,” states the Pocket Oxford, is “Belief based on grounds short of proof’’), he can be governed by whim when he’s sure he’s being ruled by critical judgment. And who, in the end, can say him nay? _If I were a potential patron seeking guidance who reads more than one critic I’d forget the practice at this point and take the high standing of all concerned with Stratford and their seriousness about their work as the Clincher. I'd become a lifetime subscriber without further reference to critics. Especially now, when Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times, in his farewell as a critic, declared that our Stratford has the finest troupe of classical actors in North America. “After eight years at work in one tradition, the Ontario festival company plays with the virtuosity of a symphony orchestra,” Atkinson wrote. “From every point of view this is its finest season.” i fi __ The actors put on their show in person, the critics follow with theirs in print. All obligations to the dramatic arts and the publishers having been met, Stratford’s Shakespearean section settles down for the season. The opening play, King John, directed by Douglas Seale, is an infrequently-acted story of cross and double-cross, of cheap politics played on a grand scale by the King of England (Douglas Rain) and the King of France (Jack Creley) over the former’s usurpation of the throne that belongs to the boy Arthur (Hayward Morse). To me it is a gallery of vivid characterizations, some not altogether belonging in that time and place, more than a play. Christopher Plummer, master of The Grand Manner once the stock-in-trade of the old-time matinee idol and as doughty an actor as ever swashed a buckle, serves King John as Philip the Bastard—and walks away with the show. Rain, whose effort to assume kingly bearing seems a bit obvious, is a Scroogy kind of John and Creley, who has a face like those rubber masks you buy in the novelty stores, looks like a Mongol lord and sounds occasionally like a scold. Plummer and Helen Burns as Lady Faulconbridge, who bore him illegitimately, play a delightful scene in which they discuss his birth. The manner and bearing of Robert Goodier, as the rebel Earl of Salisbury, gives nobility to the disaffection of King John’s subjects. The play’s major ladies, Sydney Sturgess and Ann Casson, as mothers respectively of the pretender and the contender, enliven their scenes with declamation so impassioned as to border occasionally on shrewishness. This was my first look at King John. You have the same opportunity to do as Cole Porter suggested in his popular Shakespearean parody, Kiss Me Kate: Brush up your Shakespeare. I found King John fresh and far from uninteresting. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, built around the timeless puzzle that one loves and the other doesn’t, is a wonderfully winning show as directed by Douglas Campbell. The lunar lunacies in the enchanted forest involve the viewer very much in the capers and caprices of the bewitchers and the bewitched—even though the Stratford stage is not always suited to such elfin activities. Helen Burns as Hermia and Kate Reid as Helena, whose amours are both mischievously and mistakenly directed through magic, are great. Their larruping is so lusty that their swains, despite great ardor, seem a bit frigid in contrast. The girls get the boys and vice-versa in the end—which isn’t The End. That doesn’t come for another act, during which Shakespeare ribs actors shamelessly and uproariously through CANADIAN FILM WEEKLY Page 5 ‘Finest Season’ SQUARE an amateur troupe which entertains the court. The amateurs, led by Tony van Bridge as Bottom, are Really The End. Jake Dengel makes a supple, bounding, athletic Puck, author of most of the mischief under the orders of Bruno Gerussi as King of the Fairies, whose subjects are played charmingly by children. You'll have fewer happier evenings in the year than the one on which you see A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That tragedy of errors, Romeo and Juliet, sort of knocked me off my stride as an auditor with an odd pair of hard-luck lovers. They seemed a bit bloodless most of the way. Julie Harris still has many of her Member of the Wedding tones and mannerisms, even though she exercised her difficult specialty—that of an adult playing a young girl half her age and less — very well. And for a while Bruno Gerussi, as Romeo, made me wonder where he had parked his motorcycle and leather jacket. I wasn’t sure the Shakespearean metre was for Miss Harris, since one man’s metre is another man’s poison, yet her Juliet has stayed in my mind since I saw it, which was days ago. By now, I’m sure, the characterizations are in key and the presentation, a rich one in costuming and action, has an air of impending and inevitable tragedy. Plummer as the dashing Mercutio, Rain as a Tybalt full of hatred and courage and Kate Reid as Juliet’s somewhat broad and bawdy nurse, are truly excellent. By all means see this Romeo and Juliet, which Michael Langham directed. It will fascinate when it doesn’t convince and it almost always pleases. The supplementary arts, referred to earlier, are richly realized. They include the designing and costuming of Tanya Moiseiwitsch and Brian Jackson, the music of John Cook, Harry Somers and Louis Applebaum, the fights arranged by Peter Needham and Douglas Campbell and the dances devised by Alan and Blanche Lund. The Stratford Adventure has from the first been recognized throughout this continent as high adventure in the theatre. It has rightfully become a proud adventure for those connected with it in any way. Most of all, it remains a personal adventure that is one of the highlights of the year for many thousands of people who are part of the average life of our country. That is the best guarantee of its future. UNITED ARTISTS (Continued from Page 1) which went before the cameras in and around Reno on July 12. Edward Small’s multi-milliondollar production of Jack the Giant Killer, starring Kerwin Matthews and Judi Meredith, with Jerry Juran directing in color and widescreen, and featuring new photographic and audio effects, started shooting on July 5. Also scheduled for production is Hecht-Hill-Lancaster’s Man of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster, with Harold Hecht as executive producer and Stuart Millar as producer. Something Wild, starring Carroll Baker and featuring Mildred Dunnock, will start filming in New York on July 25. George Justin is the producer and Jack Garfein will direct from his own screenplay. The film is based on Alex Karmel’s novel, Mary Ann. Also on July 25 The Hoodlum Priest, a Murray-Wood Production starring Don Murray, goes before the cameras on location in St. Louis. Irvin Kerschner will direct. Five Guns to Tombstone, a Zenith Pictures presentation, went before the cameras in Hollywood on July 11. Robert E. Kent is the producer and Edward L. Cahn directs. Revolt of the Slaves, starring Rhonda Fleming, goes before the cameras later this month in Spain. The color and widescreen spectacle, based on the novel Fabiola by Cardinal Wiseman, will be produced by Paolo Moffa and directed by Benito Malsomma. Lederer WB Ad-Pub Head Richard Lederer, with Warners since 1950 as assistant national advertising manager and latterly as staff producer, has been named director of advertising and publicity by Benjamin Kalmenson, executive v-p. Lederer, who started with Columbia in 1946, will have his office in NY.