Imperator Submersus

By T.E.K.

REX

Music by RICHARD RODGERS

Lyrics by SHELDON HARNICK

Book by SHERMAN YELLEN

To see this musical is like watching a marauding shark becalmed in a suburban swimming pool. As an actor, Nicol Williamson radiates a sense of imminent danger, mercurial passion and magnetic authority in such a way that he could be every inch the awesome monarch that Henry VIII was. But in Rex he is submerged in a book that swamps that masterful Tudor reign with research-soaked tedium.

The drift of Sherman Yellen's book is that Henry divorced or beheaded wives in quest of a male heir. Actually, there was a son, Edward VI, who died at the age of 16. Scanting the versatile Renaissance man, Yellen paints the portrait of a male chauvinist executioner.

This takes on a particularly heavy irony at the end, when we see Elizabeth seated on the throne. Everyone in the audience knows just how glorious the reign of Henry's daughter is to be.

Burnished Swords. Indeed, the only point at which Rex catches fire is a scene in which father and daughter (Penny Fuller) match warring wills like burnished swords. Fuller also plays Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn. As Anne, Fuller is a mettlesome enchantress who makes Henry's furious desire under standable. Singing in a warmly melodious baritone, Williamson enhances his tenderest moments in the show.

As for the music, Richard Rodgers is incapable of writing an uningratiating tune. But several of the numbers seem more suited to rocking a cradle than stir ring a realm, and Sheldon Harnick's lyrics confuse spareness with childishness.

The dances, choreographed by Dania Krupska, are derivative and few. Since Nicol Williamson is one of the acting comets of the age, other shows will doubtless bring him to other kings.

One can easily imagine him as the intellectually introspective and acerbic philosopher king of Pirandello's Henry IV. And he could be a storm to measure storms by on the fate-blasted heath of King Lear.

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