Word: buechner
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...most beautiful theater," exclaimed Hollywood Producer Otto Preminger. "Marvelous and effective," said Playwright Alan Jay Lerner. So, last week, with a popping of flashbulbs and champagne corks, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, latest unit to join Manhattan's Lincoln Center, swung into orbit with its opening production, Georg Buechner's 130-year-old Danton's Death...
Danton's Death, by Georg Buechner. Physically, the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Lincoln Center Repertory's new home, is resplendent (see SHOW BUSINESS). Financially, this theater company is the richest in the U.S. Dramatically, it is bankrupt. Under its new directors, Herbert Blau and Jules Irving, Lincoln Center begins its third season by patting together another of a seemingly endless series of dramatic mudpies...
...large measure the failure of the spring season at the Loeb, which reportedly set record lows on ticket sales, results from the choice of plays. Buechner's Danton's Death proved far too rhetorical, and a play with a passive protagonist must inevitably drag. James A. Culpepper's Phyllis Anderson Award-winning Treason at West Point combined inept dialogue and inadequate characterization. It was barely competent. Anthony Graham-White's adaptation of Johnson, Marston, and Chapman's Eastward Ho! had more potential--it suffered most from a lack of good comic actors. But the play is hardly an old standby...
...Buechner leaves a lot to the actor and the director. There is little in the speeches to betray the feelings of the men who speak--or to convince us of the feelings they do profess. As he kneels at the guillotine, Herault-Sechelles breaks down: "I can't seem to manage a joke." There are few such lines provided. Almost none of the actors invented the necessary gestures or falterings of the voice to make themselves believable...
John McDonnel (Legendre), Randall McLeod (Barere), William Dockin (Collot d'Herbois) and George Hamlin (Herault-Sechelles) all manager relatively lively characterizations. But they relied entirely on what Buechner gave them. Not one of them worked out any business to rivet the audience's attention. When Robert Chapman (Robespierre) took the podium to address the Jacobin Club, he held the audience in silence while he put on his glasses. No one else in the cast did something like that--not even Williams...