This shot from the Drury balcony doesn't do justice to the most beautiful show I remember at the Play House. The whole production looked as if it had been designed by Vermeer. In Cleveland, I played the fairly minor (but pivotal, of course) role of Vadius who had a scene opposite Trissotin, played by the late great Ray Walston. He had never done anything with quite so many words that had to be mastered, as opposed to made up, and I remember him asking me (!!) just how to go about approaching the material. He was an irascible, and fascinating fellow, who loved to play the ponies. ("Dear boy, are you free to go to the track on Monday?...) And he never played a scene the same way twice. This frustrated and annoyed a number of people in the company, but since I knew that's what was going to happen, and since I knew he was going to play the objectives of the scene that we'd discussed, I got a kick out of seeing just what would happen every night. Most of the time, it was terrific!

At Chatauqua, Ray couldn't join us, so I took over the lead role of Trissotin with my old chum from Hilberry days, Jim Kisicki taking my little Vadius. Win--win.

REVIEW

[a Buffalo paper...]

'Ladies Received Well' by Robert W. Plyler

An outstanding cast made Moliere's "The Learned Ladies" an evening of boffo fun at Chatauqua's Norton Hall last night. Despite the lure of Chuck Mangione's appearance at the Amphitheater, the 17th century French classic was performed to a virtually full house.

Moliere's play concerns a middle class Frenchman, Chrysale, who has a wife and two daughters. His wife, his sister, and his older daughter have fallen under the spell of a charlatan named Trissotin, who plans to use their money to buiold his academy for women. Trissotin also aspires to marry the younger daughter and thereby acquire a lovely and rich wife. Henriette, the younger daughter, has her own marriage plans. She loves the poor but handsome Clitandre, who earlier courted her sister without success. The central conflict of the play concerns the husband's sponsorship of one candidate for bridegroom while the wife supports the other.

"The Learned Ladies" is a translation of "Les Femmes Savantes." That play is very popular in France, but is rarely done in the United States because it was originally written entirely in rhyme, and no translation of it ever worked well. In 1977, Richard Wilbur completed this translation and it is an excellent one. The entire work is performed in ryhmed couplets, yet the rhyme doesn't intrude. In fact, it is subtle that it would be possible to hear the entire play without being certain that is was rhymed. But still the flow and pacing of the play are enriched by its presence.

Richard Halverson and Evie McElroy portrayed the couple of the plot. Halverson displayed perfect comic timing as he alternately screwed up his courage to face the rages of his wife, then cringed before her awesome presence. Miss McElroy's Philaminte was like a battleship in full sail. Her will and her voice easily dominated the stage. At the same time she could resort to blushes and giggles over a line of poetry, then dissolve back to domination if others didn't find the line equally impressive.

Mary Adams balanced perfectly between the silly woman caught up in the plot of Trissotin, and the conniving female out to insure that if she doesn't get Clitandre, neither wil her sister.

Lizbeth Mackay was her usual luscious self in a beautiful 17th century gown. Although she was forced to do a great deal of weeping and biting on her fan as her plans met various frustrations, she proved quite able to wield that fan as a weapon to fight off the eager scholar. James Richards add a great deal of charm to the role of the straight-spoken Clitandre. He was in many ways a straight man to the zanier characters, and he performed that role admirable.

Definitely the audience's favorite was Wayne S. Turney as the foppish Trissotin. Looking a great deal like Veronica Lake in a 17th century wig, Turney exuded pomposity, arrogance, oily charm and lust, both phyusical and economic. The scene in which Turney and James Kisicki as the scholar Vadius began slapping one another with their lace hankies had the audience in stitches.

The set of the play was beautiful. The action took place in the drawing room of Chrysale's home, and the entire set was extremely realistic, down to a secret door in the dark wooded wainscotting. Balanced lighting and the use of Baroque music to mark the passage between scenes led to a most effective impression.

The Cleveland Playhouse Summer Theatre's presentation of "The Learned Ladies" was professional and entertaining. The audience smiled throughout the presentation and left praising the performance.

It should be noted, however, that "The Learned Ladies" ranks with other classics like Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." All of these works are masterfully written by superior authors, but are designed at attackes on one group or another. Moliere's play does what it sets out to do in an effective way. But there will be people who will consider that the play is offensive to women, with its repeated injuunctions that husbands, to be REAL husbands, must dominate their wives, and "A woman's polished he intellect enough if she can tell a vest fr om a pair of breeches."

Likewise, the perpetual equation of intellectualism with pedantry is funny to the anti-intellectual, but poses a problem for parents and educatorsf trying to inspire a child to intellect.

With the exception of these two objections, which many people will not consider serious, the production merits our praise.