Word: lithgow
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...John Lithgow and James Paul's Histoire du Soldat is witty, charming, visually engaging--everything that Trouble is not. Stravinsky's score is a minor classic and the seven-piece ensemble plays with precision and grace. The English text by Michael Flanders and Kitty Black occasionally becomes more childish than childlike in its rhyming, but it captures the spirit of the original Russian folk tale more closely than the French text of C.F. Ramuz...
...Lithgow stages this tale of a soldier bargaining with the devil and learning better, with whimsy verging on burlesque. Lithgow himself plays the devil as a slithery eccentric who goes after souls with a butterfly net. The ubiquitous Arthur Friedman as narrator bounces in and out of the action, as does a chameleon chorus that appears as everything from peasants to sheep to a fluid landscape. Philip Heckscher, the soldier, is appropriately ingenuous but his voice often betrays uncomfortable strain. Jane Mushabac has choreographed the play. Her group dances have wit but become overly frantic when Lithgow's devil gets...
...playing with Lithgow, most distinguished themselves. Laurence Senelick's Orgon never quite crystalized by himself; but he was hilarious as Tartuffe manipulated him. Elizabeth Cole's Elmire, competent with others, was delicious in the arms of the hypocrite. And even those who didn't speak to him, spoke more naturally in Tartuffe's scenes...
Part of the credit for this must go to director George Hamlin. He uses Lithgow well. Characters with nothing to say are always given something to do. The blocking is sufficiently fluid to keep the production from seeming a series of tableaux. When any of the actors give the others something believable to react to, they have an easy time of it. And throughout the production reasonably clever touches are evident which the actors simply couldn't pull...
...might be argued that comedy must involve a collapse of measured behavior. But the breakdown is possible within the style. If you don't believe it, see Lithgow, Norma Levin, as Mariane, and James Shuman, as Valere, also managed their humor without many extraneous notes. Their love scene was lovely...