Page 6-Thursday, August 10, 1978-The Michigan Daily A MOVING DUETA TSTRA TFORD: Sheldon Rosen's'Virginia Woolf' By CHRISTOPHER POTTER Special tothe Daily STRATFORD, Ont.-Ned and Jack, a new work by Canadian playwright Sheldon Rosen, is one of the major current offerings of Stratford's Third Stage Theatre-an arena-style theatre Ned and Jack By Sheldon Rosen StratfordFestival Theatre ................... Jack Wetherall ... Alan Scarfe Directed by Peter Mass Ned.. Jack . playwright Edward Sheldon, in New York in the early 1920s. Barrymore was of course the most renowned actor of his time; Sheldon, almost totally forgotten today, was in fact the most revered playwright of his generation, worshipped as a mkntor-god by Eugene O'Neill and countless other contem- poraries. SHELDON'S WAS a career destined to be cut horrifyingly short: stricken with acute arthritis while still in his late twenties, he was soon forced to abandon his writing, and within a decade had become both blind and physically im- mobile. Rosen's play details a fictionalized but plausible late-night drunken revel between these two inseparable friends, each caught at a crossroad of his life. Jack (Alan Scarfe) has just opened in a Broadway production of Hamlet, and received the most ecstatic reviews of his career. He is now a full-fledged now elevated to full-programmed status in this year's Festivals am- bitiously expanded program. Ned and Jack chronicles a lone but profound encounter between John Barrymore and his best friend, superstar, and terrified by the idea. Ned (Jack Wetherall), already a semi- invalid, has been informed that same evening by his doctor that his disease is incurable and that he will irrevocably Q3 rtainmcnnts progress into total incapacitation. THE TWO friends' moonlit celebration commences as Jack tipsily scales Ned's balcony and, still clad in his Hamlet costume, with four cham- paigne bottles in hand, lurches into his sleeping friend's bedroom. Thus follows a night-into-morning exorcism much on the scale of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, and often crackling with the same intensity as its comic and tragic elements are juxtaposed with sometimes unnerving rapidity. Jack flings himself about with a rapier-sharp, often brutally self- deprecating wit, his thespian's dignity impaired by his inebriation only when he lapses into bouts of self-pity and guilt. He laments his compulsive licen- ciousness, and bemoans his guilt over his absence from his wife and daughter, living in Paris. He rattles off this familiar confessional to Ned, whom he regards not only as his best friend but as his artistic and spiritual guide. NED, INWARDLY no less intense but still the cooler, more laid back of the two, is reluctant to dwell verbally on his own far greater dilemmas, and it is Jack's slow-dawning realization of his compatriot's impending disaster that gives the play its deep and ultimately tragic focus. In its early stages Ned and Jack maintains a fairly light key, abounding with a slashing, bitchy humor that might make Albee himself jealous. The two pals guzzle the champagne, reminisce about their travels and their art, and hilariously attempt to urinate off the outer balcony. Act Two, however, veers decidedly to the somber side, as Ned's impending sentence to a living death takes center stage in its wobbly protagonists' preoccupation. AS THE BOOZE begins to work its tongue-loosening effects, all of Ned's pent-up terror and fury begins to spill forth. He lashes out at Jack's self- centerdness, and speculates grotesquely on what "favorite position" an attendant will someday have to set his own soon-to-turn-to-stone body in when receiving visitors. As the total horror of Ned's predicament hits him full in the face, Jack searches frantically and agonizingly for a way to help his friend, while the night outside dwindles into early dawn. He suggests they both sim- ply chuck their present lives and go live in some South Seas paradise. Ned bit- The island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa, is a little smaller than the state of Texps. It is 980 miles long and measures 360 miles across at its widest point. terly rejects the idea of becoming a veritable burden to Jack or anyone else, then proceeds to cut mercilessly through all of Jack's desperate attem- pts at solace. It soon becomes clear that all the booze and intellectulization in the world will not help assuage the tragedy that will soon cut like a scythe between them. AT THIS SEEMINGLY dead-end point, when Jack finally sees that the only balm he can offer his friend is sim- ple love, enforced by the absolute knowledge that that love does exist, he exhorts Ned to repeat after him: "Jack loves me!" At first mocking, Ned's shield of cynicism disintegrates and he collapses, sobbing into Jack's arms in a long, heartfelt and dramatically believable embrace. Afterwards, Ned makes Jack promise -to bring the outside world in to him as the years go by, as his own capacity to perceive it will soon be limited to the circumstances of his own bedroom. The exorcism is now complete, and Ned can face the darkness that awaits him by his knowledge that he will not be facing it totally alone. (Indeed, Sheldon sub- sequently became receiver and counsel to innumerable friends in the arts who beat a continual path to his door until his death some 25 years later). DESPITE SOME strained predic- tability as its plot turns grimmer, Ned and Jack remains a corkingly enter- taining play handicapped by one very large flaw: The performance of Jack Wetherall as Ned falls woefully short of capturing either his character's terror or his increasingly tragic dignity in learning-to cope with his fate. Wetherall handles the lighter ex- changes with fair aplomb, but appears totally out of his depth when confron- ting the deeper turmoil of Jack's life. He is able to affect an athritic's stiff movements adequately, but his bland, sometimes outright flat verbal and facial gestures rarely convey the slightest notion of the meaning of pain. Far from suffering the agonies of a body turned enemy, Wetherall seems barely to work up so much as a light sweat during the course of th other- wise harrowing evening. CONSIDERING THE lack of a sub- stantial foil to play off of, it is a tribute to Alan Scarfe that his Barrymore remains throughout the determinedly vibrant presence necessary to propel the play. Scarfe is a wonderfully rich and robust actor, and in Ned and Jack he passionately captures the carousing, charismatic dynamo that was so typically Barrymore. If his dramatic moments don't work quite as well as his comic ones, it may be that he frequen- tly felt forced to overcompensate for Wetherall's lack of any visible emotion. Peter Moss' direction is sensitive and tightly paced throughout, and Shawn Kerwin's one-bedroom set is fun- ctionally excellent, allowing the actors to roam about freely. Rosen's writing is perhaps derivative of Albee and others, but remains both funny and moving in its tribute to the awesome healing powers of friendship and human love. One can only achingly wonder what, say, Nicholas Pennell or Brian Bedford (both currently at Stratford) might have achieved opposite Scarfe in the role of Ned. Perhaps ifa future produc- tion of thisplay materializes, theStrat- Song sung bland Neil Diamond takes one in a series of many breaks to acknowledge his fans in a Pine Knob appearance on Tuesday. Monday's Special- Tequila Night Spedil low price on al tequila drinks ' "MUSIC AND MEAL DEAL" I Dine at the restaurant after 4:00 P.M. and receive FREE admission to Nightclub that eve- i ning. SUN.-THURS.