Play House Theater's 'Becket' Exciting and Absorbing Drama

By PETER BELLAMY

I'm Feeling So Sad," at the English. Music, sound effects

and lights are used effectiveThe Play House has shown Drury Theater. ly to indicate the passage of admirable feeling for change "Becket," written by the time, change in locale or of mood and tense in its latest French playwright, Jean Anweather, or to heighten emoproduction at the Euclid-77th ouilh, is an exciting and abtional tension. Paul Rodgers' Street Theater. sorbing drama of the soul. It stark, stern four-level set acIts presentation of "Becket," is featured by two arresting, centuates the cruel and barthe dramatic story of the mar-most eloquent performances barous age that was the 12th tyrdom of St. Thomas a Beckby James Cromwell as Becket, et, which opened last night, is and Richard Halverson the furthest possible cry from Henry II. that bizarre and zany farce, "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's

century.

Director William Woodman, as aided by the playwright, has made of the drama not an historical pageant, but the

THE PLAY HAS been trans-

Hung You in the Closet, and lated into simple, beautiful deeply personal relationship

between two intensely human beings. Henry II and Becket are made to seem not lifeless characters drawn from dry pages of history but creatures of life and blood.

As young playboys fond of wenching, hunting and carousing, they are men of deep lusts. Their falling out is akin

ishly clever young opportunto that of King Henry V and ist, who against his will beFalstaf in Shakespeare's "Henry IV," except that in tains immortality, although comes a holy man and atthe case of "Becket" it is the

one historian recorded that

bury.

All hands may be proud of this one.

king who remains a sinner he lived lavishly and mainand Becket who is reformed. tained a retinue of 700 knights Anouilh has taken a few lib-while Archbishop of Cantererties with history. He has made Becket a Saxon, probably to point up the differences between him and Henry II and his Norman barons. Fact is that both Becket's parents were French. His father, indeed, was born in Rouen, where another saint was burned in the market place in 1231.

There is also a parallel between Becket and Sir Thomas More, both of whom died for principles.

THOSE WHO MIGHT suspect that the unusually great K affection of Henry II for Becket might indicate a

K

+

Κ homosexual relationship, K should remember that friendships between men in medieval times were frequently of a highly emotional though entirely normal nature. Also, Henry hated his wife and mother and disliked his children-which is born out by history--and was reaching for love and trust.

Men in those days were not only intellectual companions but comrades-at-arms. Women of the nobility were commonly treated like chattels and females of the lower classes were the frequent object of rape by their betters. Indeed, "Becket" has a scene wherein Becket callously hands over his mistress to Henry.

Cromwell commands complete attention and respect in his portrayal of the king, that mercurial grandson of William the Conqueror. It is an exhausting role, both emotionally and physically, and manic-depressive in the gam ut of its emotions.

HALVERSON IS also wonderfully expressive in registering the moods of a devil-