A-r.ts,
The Michigan Daily Friday, July 31, 1981 Page 9
Flett flat in Stratford's
Shrew,' but 'Misanthrope'
sails on Bedford's talent
By JOSHUA PECK
Specialtothe Daily
STRATFORD, ONTARIO-Whatever
Sharry Flett's Katharina is, she is no
shrew. Intelligent, maybe; spunky, cer-
tainly., But if there's one thing all
productions of Shakespeare's Taming
of the Shrew ought to agree on, it's that
Kate's hellish fury has got to be as
commanding and central to the play as
fireworks are to the Fourth of July. Yet
Flatt at her best is a meager sparkler
twirling in the crowd.
Flett's extraordinary beauty and her
considerable experience both point to
her having been the right choice for the
tempestuous Katharina. She has even
played the role before, in the thriving
metropolis of Edmonton, Alberta. But
she is in the big leagues now opposite
Len Cariou, and comes across as more
of a nonentity than a furnace.
CURIOUSLY, the production's
strongest element, like that of the con-
currently running Coriolanus, is the
beautiful physical work of the prover-
bial cast of thousands. Like all the rest
of Shakespeare's comedies, Taming of
the Shrew at its best is an exhilarating
blend of the high and low forms of
comedy, delicately interspersing the
subtlest of wry observations about the
human condition with the basest and
broadest of pratfalls and puerile tom-
foolery. As Flett's flatness defuses the
quieter, more reflective element of the
play, the antics of the minor characters
jump into prominence.
Director Peter Dews has chosen to
include The Induction in his production,
a scrap of foolishness that introduces
the better-known portion of Taming of
the Shrew by detailing the deception of
a drunk by the name of Christopher Sly
into believing that he is a wealthy lord
with wife, sack, and entertainers at his
ready command. (The Shrew story is
actually a play performed for Sly as
part of this deception.)
In the teasing of the wonderfully sod-
den Sly (Desmond Ellis) there is an
abundance of coquetry and inebriated
slapstick. The demanding physical
training that goes into an actor's instru-
ction is readily visible in Shrew's artful
bumbling. Such carefully
choreographed missteps could never'
endure haphazard stumbling; it is to
the company's credit that they've risen
above the principals' problems to
become the production's stars.
THE BIG LOSER, of course, is
Cariou, a strong performer whose
stature is perfectly evident in
Coriolanus, but not here. The thrill of
the play, after all, is watching the artful
tugging between the bitchiest of bitches
and the craftiest of chauvinists. Cariou
holds his end up all right, but the
nagging imbalance wrecks the
pyrotechnical display. The Shrew, I'm
afraid, is already tame.
The new brass at Stratford rewarded
Flett with the preeminent female role
in Moliere's The Misanthrope as well,
though here fortunately, she is not quite
so pivotal. The role of Alceste, the title
character, is the property of Brian Bed-
ford, the very best of Stratford's actors.
Bedford gives a mournfully melancholy
reading to the part not a little
reminiscent of his Jacques in the
Festival's As You Like It from a few
years back.
Alceste is a man who insists on ab-
solute and uncompromising sincerity.
His dilemma: He lives in what may
have beeii the most insincere society in
the history of the race, the age of
flowery falsehood under Louis XIV of
France.
NOT MUCH happens in the play; it is
essentially a character study of a man
who could only be happy if he were able
to twist his society into something
else-an unlikely event-or suppress
his- own hankering for complete
honesty-an impossibility.
Bedford is flanked by Nicholas-pen-
nell (last seen in Ann Arbor as Richard
III) in the role of Alceste's dear friend
Philinte. In comparison to the charac-
ters of Pennell and the other ordinary
figures that people the play, Bedford's
quirky misanthropy sails delicately
forward.
The production is a good, but not ex-
ceptional one. There are stagnant and
draggy moments in the pacing that beg
remedy, and Flett does her best to
derail the effort altogether.
THE OPPRESSIVE social strictures
of the day are beautifully conveyed by
Desmond Heeley's sets and costumes.
Even the men are so smothered in wigs;
bric-a-brac, fringes, and fluffs that
flowery insincerity comes to seem
called for. And the neatly manicured
lawns and foliage couldn't possible be
better behaved.
And Bedford fails to overwhelm his
audience only because his character's
actions are by and large internal and
ephemeral. As an alternative to the in-
defatigable power of say, his Richard
or Malvolio, which vanquished even the
most cynical audience's intellectual
doubts, Bedford's Alceste seduces the
soul into the dangerous belief that, in-
deed, the world may indeed be as un-
worthy a place as he insists that it is.
Sharry Flett's weak performance as Katharina opposite Len Cariou as
Petruchio robs 'The Taming of the Shrew' of its central conflict by making
the taming of the shrew a foregone conclusion:
THE. COMING WEEK.
Pick-..Hits.
MUSIC
Go-go's-This all-woman band from California has a reputation for giving
good live shows, even though their recently released debut album is no great
shakes. Monday, August 3; Second Chance; $6.50in advance.
Nighthawks-This group of Washington, D.C. session players are certainly
more accomplished musicians than The Go-go's. They've been playing their
own brand of bluesy rock and roll for years behind notables like James Cot-
ton and J. B. Hutto, and with the help of Muddy Waters and Gregg Allman
(among others) along the way. Now, they've finally got the push of a major
label behind them on their fifth and most recent album. Tuesday, August 4:
Rick's; $5.00 in advance.
Northwood Symphonette and Keith Bryan - The highlight of this concert
sponsored by the University Musical Society will be the Ann Arbor premiere
of a flute concerto commissioned in memoriam of a member of the music
school faculty. Wednesday, August 5; Rackham Auditorium: $8.00, $650.
$5.00.
THEATER
'The Sea'-The RC Players present this social/farce tragedy with their
usual, unusually adept professionalism. July 30-August 2 and August 6-9:
RC Auditorium (in East Quad); 8 p.m.; $3 for students. $4 for general public.