Opening in Wisconsin

The U.S. theater's favorite acting couple was back last week in its favorite tryout town. Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne brought a first-night glitter to the University of Wisconsin's modernistic campus theater in Madison, some 40 miles from the 100 Lunt acres in Genesee Depot. The new play, their 21st together, was I Know My Love, S. N. Behrman's adaptation of a French drama by Marcel Achard.

The Lunts launched the new Wisconsin playhouse ten years ago with The Taming of the Shrew and returned three times with other plays. From Playwright Behrman, they got the title of "patron saints of the university"; from the grateful university, a couple of honorary degrees in 1941. Last week's show was their first anywhere since O Mistress Mine, in which they also played the Madison theater.

The first-nighters rose to the bait in mink, dinner jackets and plunging necklines; all the seats for the whole week had been snapped up by mail before the box office opened. Like tryout audiences anywhere else, most felt that the play "needs work" during the 14-week tour before it opens on Broadway next October. The campus paper even set itself to a brisk panning (to which Actor-Director Lunt retorted: "The babblings of child reporters").

Whatever its faults, the play, which runs backward in time from 1939 to 1888, has the obvious virtue of being custom-tailored for the Lunts. It gives them a chance to grow young gracefully, showing off their virtuosity in the process. Starting on the golden anniversary of the central characters (the Lunts celebrated their own silver one two years ago), it first presents Miss Fontanne as a stooped, tottering old lady. At the last, the aging but ageless star (audiences always have trouble remembering that she is over 60) plays a bewitching girl who looked youthful and beautiful enough to make Madison playgoers goggle.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.