A dead horse, this Shakespeare play

By William Glover

NEW YORKCP-A dead horse is the only stage prop for "Troilus and Cressida” as devised by David Schweizer to shake up William Shakespeare.

The imitation beast, body twisted and with one eye fixed in glassy agony on the audience like one of Picasso's nightmare creations, sums up what might have been good but instead is awful about the production that officially premiered at Lincoln Center's Newhouse Theater, formerly the Fo-

rum.

Schweizer, according to the program, is "the kind of bright, new talent" that producer Joseph Papp likes to employ in his restless search for dynamic dramatics.

This tackling, however, of one of the bard's most complex and dark studies of human weakness, turns out to be a hollow, reckless and discordant travesty. It has all the artistic appeal of seeing Mona Lisa smeared with a mustache by some mischievous schoolboy.

The homosexual aspect of some of the text has been exaggerated into swishing, campy dominance so that the deliberations of Greek generals, become a flatulent Saturday night at the Continental Baths. The Trojans don't come off any better, emerging as cartoon caricatures.

The mood of deliberate distortion is quickly established by William Hickey's portrayal of Pandarus with all the nasal, whining drag affections that have become his chronic cliche. Thersites, the savage railer, is turned into a fool with a poppet.

When Achilles eventually

emerges to do battle, he opposes the armored Trojans in feathery boa and cocotte makeup.

Another conceit of the production is to have a dozen actors overlap into the 20 speaking roles which Schweizer has kept of Shakespeare's two dozen. So Nestor and Priam, Paris and Patroclús, Menelaus and Ajax are among those so performed, to no readily discernible theatrical advantage.

The triple assignment of Cressida, Cassandra and Helen is carried by Madeleine Le Roux, who cannot conceal wee acting ability under an assortment of massive wigs.

Having set the epicene key, Schweizer appears to have proceeded with excessive permissiveness for his fellows. Christopher Walken, the Achilles, does one bit in imitation Brando tones; Ron Faber plays venerable roles as though in a Carole Burnett show. Leonard Frey's high-pitched Ulysses comes closest to what the author presumably intended.

The papier mache equine at the corner of the stage is a constant reminder of what mordant comment about war can be; here it unfortunately just decorates a production that is a dead horse.