Old Play in Manhattan

Mary Stuart (adapted from Friedrich Schiller's drama by Jean Stock Goldstone and John Reich) is a great 150-year-old German classic which, despite the appeal of its heroine to English-speaking nations, seldom turns up in their theaters. One reason may be the problem of translation; another, the assortment of plays about Mary Stuart--Swinburne's, Drinkwater's, Maxwell Anderson's--that are in English already. Finally, 150-year-old classics have a way of showing their age.

To open the off-Broadway Phoenix Theater's fifth season British Director Tyrone Guthrie has offered a Mary Stuart that stresses, that highlights, that exults in its age. Guthrie's production is high-busted, brass-throated, old-style theater. Its smallest scene is a Big Scene; it tosses mere suicide into a scene shift. A sound playwright, Schiller begins virtually at the end--with the Queen of Scots' rash, stormy, ill-starred life behind her and the peers condemning her to death. The play itself, though aswirl with intrigue, assassination plots and lust-devoured deliverers, really turns on whether Mary's royal cousin Elizabeth will sign the death warrant. The scene shifts back and forth between Mary (Irene Worth) in her castle prison and an autocratic but waveringly feminine Elizabeth (Eva Le Gallienne) in her palace. By shrugging at geography as well as history, Schiller once lets the two Queens confront each other, and has the Scottish one so denounce her English rival as in effect to sign her own death warrant.

Mary Stuart offers no end of bravura and brag, of stomp and stealth, as the play rushes from one emotional exclamation point to another. Since the characters never really draw human breath, they never provide the thrills born of real concern. Mary Stuart has clang without resonance, but it is old-fashioned enough to seem novel, and good enough of its kind to be enjoyed.

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