Word: shaffers
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...left a performance of Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt of the Sun, I tried to recall the last drama of such stature to come from a British pen. Anything on Pinter, Osborne, Fry, Eliot? No. Then I realized that Royal Hunt is the finest British play since Shaws Saint Joan burst on the boards four decades...
...Shaffer's Pizarro is a 20th century existentialist in the body of a 16th century swineherd. Born a bastard, he is too poor to count as human in the society of Spain. At 59, he scorns any ideal of military chivalry he once held. Love is a mockery and faith a nagging memory of trust betrayed. Even the gold is "only a metal" to him, but he pursues it as Ahab pursued the white whale. Just as Ahab was obsessed with the mystery of existence, Pizarro is haunted by the emptiness of being. Both are horrified by the blank...
...subtler conflict enmeshes Pizarro and Atahuallpa. The existential hero of nothingness encounters the Rousseauistic myth of the innocent child of nature, the noblest savage of them all. David Carradine plays the Inca with marmoreal stoicism, and Shaffer gives him a primitive sign-and-grunt language that sometimes reduces the son of the sun to the son of Tondeleyo. The cynic in Pizarro becomes enthralled by the savior in Atahuallpa, who has a shining conviction that his godhead will raise him from the dead. Pizarro dreads but courts the great Inca's murder. If Atahuallpa is resurrected, might not Christ...
...doubt that pervades the playgoer is whether the real Pizarro suffered any such metaphysical anguish. There is no proof that he did. A deeper doubt is raised by the playwright's view of all life as a bleak cheat. Most men have stronger human ties than Shaffer's hero, and they take life on faith, with an acceptance of what is good, bad and mortal about it. The flamboyant staging of Royal Hunt widens the spectator's eye, but the confrontation of two heroes and two civilizations compels neither cheers nor tears...
Martin Gottfried is not one of those New York drama critics who can doom a play with a wince of his pen. Nor can he do much to keep a show running. When he took his seat last week at the opening of Peter Shaffer's Royal Hunt of the Sun (see THEATER), pseudo-savvy first-nighters did not point him out with a knowing air. He is, after all, no more than the man on the aisle for Women's Wear Daily, trade paper to the women's fashion industry. As such...