Volume 5, Number 11 · January 6, 1966
Theater in New York
By Elizabeth Hardwick
The Country Wife
by William Wycherley
Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center
Inadmissible Evidence
by John Osborne
Belasco Theater
The Devils
by John Whiting
Broadway Theater
Repertory theater for New York? Weren't we all thinking of something like Laurence Olivier as Hotspur one night and as Justice Shallow the next? I found, to go back a little, that it was difficult to make out what we were supposed to feel about David Wayne and Hal Holbrook in a 'challenging' variety of roles. This was a puzzling privilege we were being offered. One mentions the leading actors in the Kazan-Whitehead company only because the names of the actors in the Blau-Irving Company are not yet familiar to us. We now have their second production, Wycherley's The Country Wife, and it is clear that the company and its whole organization must be immediately modified. To refuse to do this, out of some fidelity to old longings, would be puritanical pedantry. This group is an emerging country that must have foreign aid or sink. Outside American and foreign actors and directors will have to be brought in for particular roles and particular plays, for single performances and single productions. It is one thing to collect a group of dedicated people working together on a shoe-string outside New York, bringing interesting theater where there would perhaps be no theater at all. But you cannot play around with the gold of Lincoln Center, buying the most splendid costumes and the most intricate staging, and, like a millionaire hoarding soap shavings, cut off consumption just where it is needed most, in the leading roles. It is often thought that the repertory ideal is sacred, that somehow the company working and learning together will be sufficient to its tasks. I do not, however, from my seat in the audience, get the impression that the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center is made up of youngsters learning their craft. I have the belief that the contrary is true: that these actors are in the prime of life and that they are as they will be. Those roles that cannot be filled among them will have to be filled from the outside.
Review, 1928 words
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