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The Pirate: Martin Beck Theatre,
November 25, 1942
New York Times, November 26, 1942
In the Play:
By LEWIS NICHOLS
The theatre celebrated Thanksgiving a little
early this year, quietly advancing the clock a few
hours in order to bring the Lunts back to town.
Anything that serves to return the Lunts to Broadway
is an occasion for rejoicing, for they are the
theatre's greatest pair of actors, and they have
been magnificent in plays from Shakespeare to
Sherwood, with snatches of vaudeville thrown in to
relieve the danger of too much intensity. This time
they are in their vaudeville mood, for "The Pirate,"
which S. N. Behrman picked up from an idea in a play
by Ludwig Fulda, is flamboyant and bizarre, and it
gives the Lunts an opportunity for burlesque thus
far unparalleled in their combined career.
Mr. Lunt obviously is a vaudeville artist and a
hoofer at heart. Quite clearly, when he should have
been milking the cows on his renowned Genesee Depot
farm, he has been practicing legerdemain, pulling
rabbits out of chance visitors' hats and
experimenting with the strut that is the hallmark of
the more distinguished sleight-of-hand geniuses. In
"The Pirate" he has the opportunity to wallow in
these new-found joys, and Mr. Lunt is not a
vaudeville artist to let his public down. Give him
the end of the run and he will move over to Loew's
State, there to go on and on as mesmerist and
dancer; he has arrived.
* *
*
That "The Pirate" was written for its
distinguished players cannot be doubted, for it is
not out of Mr. Behrman's usual drawer—in in fact,
some traces of that drawer linger around long enough
to throw the play out of joint sometimes, and to
slow down the action into good drawing room
conversation. At that graceful art Mr. Behrman has
no peer, but here he is writing a gaudy tale that
should be filled only with high-flown phrases, and
the occasional peering forth of the terse
epigrammatist serves to distract by changing humor
into wit—or just leaving it as conversation.
It is the story of Manuela and Pedro Vargas and
Serafin, and, of course, Estramudo, the pirate.
Pedro is the stuffy man of business, Manuela the
wife who reads the romantic tales of piracy, and
Serafin the strolling player who brings his troupe
to town to give a performance or so before starving
elsewhere. In order to woo Menuela away from her
husband, the player boasts that he really is the
pirate, a safe gesture on his part, because already
he has recognized Estramudo in the person of the man
of affairs. It all ends with Serafin carrying his
Miss Fontanne off after her quite unwanted husband
had been exposed and ordered to jail.
* *
*
And it is a sufficient plot to set forth before
the Lunts, for they can do anything. Miss Fontanne
is roguish, coquettish, practical, by turns; she
will speak gaily to charming strangers who very
likely may be pirates, and she can order them out of
her house with a firmness marred only by the
slightest of winks. Mr. Lunt can be bumptious or
pleading, and, in addition to all that, he can break
an egg to make an omelet and then find it turn into
a rabbit. The man obviously has studied.
There are many moments of great charm in "The
Pirate." The entrance of Mr. Lunt is one. Preceded
by a tatterdemalion Negro band, and drawn in a
carriage by his fellow-players, he comes across the
stage, steps out, does a little dance and then is
ready for the business at hand. Another moment is
when he walks a tightrope from one balcony to that
of his lady, his expression on the journey being a
magnificent one of casual concentration. The whole
scene of the troupe's performance at the end of the
play is the Lunts' type of theatre at its best.
The Playwrights' Company and Theatre Guild, which
jointly offered the play, have done a beautiful job
of costuming and staging. For direction, there again
it is Mr. Lunt and John C. Wilson. The costumes,
which are the most gorgeous seen along Broadway in
years, are by Miles White, and the settings, in
perfect keeping with the play, are Lemuel Ayers's.
When the Lunts set out to do a burlesque-vaudeville,
they dress it well.
The Pirate: Martin Beck Theatre,
November 25, 1942 |
