Two Comedies

It has been alleged that John Lithgow is a giraffe. Those who maintain this position malign his genius. He is the best comic actor at Harvard, not for any physical peculiarity, but because his sense of timing, his vocal and muscular control, are more refined than anyone else's.

He can--ask anyone who saw The Forced Marriage at the Loeb--execute a full turn while balanced bow-legged on the balls of his feet, and time it to match the pace of the scene. He can remain articulate while speaking at absurd speeds, and communicate the rhythm of his speech to the actor he's arguing with, so that the dialogue sounds slightly like a patter song.

He's also an inspired director. He made Moliere's artificial little farce come alive and cohere like nothing I've seen since "The Beggar's Opera." He also constructed the masks in which the cast performs. They are the work of a master cartoonist.

Lithgow also designed the set, which looked only functional at first. The platforms and curtains allowed for a wide variety of dancelike maneuvers and no doubt cost very little. But Lithgow stuck in one whimsical touch. As Pancrace he winds up, at one point, behind the curtain, still arguing with himself. He finishes his speech with a flourish, and just his hand appears above the curtain rod.

Despite all of which, to talk about somebody else, I think Michael Erhardt (Sganarelle) has Lithgow beat on the use of the hands. He managed, when speaking delightedly of the prospect of children, to so fiddle with his fingers at the level of a toddler's topknot, to suggest that he was plucking the little urchins' heads off.

But, again, to say only that he calls up the child murderer with a twist of the thumb is to overlook his more substantial accomplishment. He's on stage the length of the play, and never falters. He works well with the succession of characters who confront him. And he has the finesse not to waste himself in the early scenes. I only caught on to a few of his bits at the very end.

I wonder about John Ross. He hasn't got Lithgow's perfect timing or Erhardt's acid touch, but I've seen him be a lot funnier than he was here. I think the problem was that as Geronimo he hadn't much to hold on to. When he has a characterization to work out he can do it skillfully. Lacking that, he seemed merely to focus on the sound of his words and the sweep of his bows, and never evoked a solid character.

Ann Gottlieb's costumes, incidentally, were perfect.

The Second Play

Skip Ascheim directed Giraudoux's "The Apollo of Bellac" in quite a different style, but with almost equal success. The only serious problem was that the play depends entirely on one idea, and consequently sags a bit.

The theory whereby the tale hangs is that all a woman need do to captivate a man is to tell him he's handsome. This "secret" The Man From Bellac (Carl Nagin) divulges to the naive young Agnes (Patricia Hawkins), whom he meets in the outer office of a firm with which she is seeking a job.

She captivates, first, by way of practice, a male fly, and then the Clerk (Charles Degelman), the Vice President (Peter C. Johnson), the Directors (Peter E. Johnson, Joel Silverstein, and Henry Lanier), and finally the President (Arthur Friedman). Each gave way in splendidly individual fashion.

Miss Hawkins was a charming ingenue, though, strangely enough, at her best with the fly and the chandelier--which she caused to light up with pride. Her long, eyes-closed speech to Apollo dragged, but not fatally.

Nagin is an engaging puzzle. He always remains detached. He is warm, he smiles with real affection. But he never plunges into his part. He seems to be watching his fellow actors as well as reacting to them. Half his glances seem really directed at the audience. This reserve may well be justified in the magical character he plays. But it does close off one means of audience involvement. And it limits his comic effect. You can't project omniscience and take the audience in. Even if you have all the answers, you have to look fooled to be funny.