Old Play in Manhattan

Caesar and Cleopatra (by George Bernard Shaw; produced by Richard Aldrich & Richard Myers in association with Julius Fleischmann) remains after half a century one of Shaw's, and hence the modern theater's, most vigorous plays. Shaw has often been more amusing, and sometimes more electrifying or profound. But in Caesar, using comedy with little flippancy, he achieved sharp comment; and with history for a pedestal, he set something Roman and solid upon it.

The play shows a middle-aged Julius Caesar championing a young Cleopatra against her brother in a squabble over the Egyptian throne, and barely winning out by force of arms. But what most playwrights would turn into gaudy love feasts and drum & trumpet heroics is a chance for Shaw to explore the ancient world, contrast youth with age, servant with master, Egypt with Rome, Caesar with Caesarism.

Sixteen-year-old Cleopatra runs through the play like quicksilver--a kitten all cuddle and claws, still worlds away from Shakespeare's Serpent of Old Nile. Caesar, finding her a petulant child, leaves her a queen and woman, with a new authority and cruelty. But it is Caesar who really dominates the stage: a Caesar who is neither the image on a Roman coin nor the stern voice of the Roman Capitol, but a great and contradictory man molded into a peculiarly Shavian hero. Shaw's Caesar is much more the clement conqueror than the model for dictators, a man above meanness and resentment, with a lonely rather than a loving heart. On him first Rome and then middle age have set their heavy seal. His is a sad skepticism, not quite Pilate's "What is truth?" nor the Preacher's "All is vanity," but rather an awareness of the impotence of wisdom.

The joker in Shaw breaks out sufficiently in Caesar and Cleopatra, e.g., his burlesqued esthete (well played by John Buckmaster) and frightfully proper Early Briton (well played by Arthur Treacher). But the tone of the play is prevailingly wry and ironic. The air seems very chill at times for all the Mediterranean sunlight. A bald and aging conqueror withholds his heart from a violent young girl rather than have her torture it; then, with a rueful smile, promises to send her a dashing young Marc Antony. "Murder shall breed murder . . ." he laments, "until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand." But as he goes out, and the final curtain falls, it is to the upraised swords of his soldiers and their great shout of "Hail, Caesar!"

The new production (Broadway's first since 1925) is satisfying without being brilliant. It offers a properly tightened version, enhanced by Rolf Gerard's impressive, simple sets. Sir Cedric Hardwicke (plagued by laryngitis on opening night) plays his role with a slow gravity better suited to Caesar than to Shaw, but still with real authority and understanding. European-born Lilli Palmer suits both Cleopatra and Shaw. She is as kittenish as Shaw's Cleopatras always are, as physically alluring as they always should be.

Though 93 years old and 3,500 miles away, Playwright George Bernard Shaw kept a close, finicky eye on his latest Broadway revival. For nine months he badgered the producers with peppery cables, letters and postcards telling them just how to finance, cast and stage the play. He hand-picked Sir Cedric as Caesar (having coached him in the role in London in 1925), and gave Lilli Palmer his blessing as Cleopatra after Gertrude Lawrence brought her around for a visit last summer. He even passed on the production's Manhattan playhouse.

Still his own hard-bargaining agent, manager and lawyer, G.B.S. disposed brusquely of an early suggestion that the play be put on by Theatre Incorporated, a non-profit group which sent him handsome royalties in 1946 from its hit revival of Pygmalion. "I take no interest in nonprofit enterprises," he wrote. "I am in business and prefer to deal with keen business managers who are out to make as much money as possible . . ."

Next he squelched Co-Producer Richard Aldrich's idea of sharing risks by bringing other producers into the deal: "The entrepreneurs must be a solid single firm taking all the profits and risking all the loss . . . Are you a man of business or a philanthropic distributor of rake-offs?"

But Shaw made one concession: he reluctantly agreed to shave his usual royalty from 15% to 10%. Yielding to the argument that the production would be expensive in view of the two stars' salaries, he cautioned: "I am depending on you not to make your salary list so heavy that the play will have to be taken off in a fortnight unless it attracts capacity every time . . . When negotiating with stars, remember that in my case, I am the star ... So few managers know their own business that I mostly have to make their bargains for them as well as my own."

Having thus warned the producers against paying the actors too much, Shaw advised Sir Cedric not to let his salary be pared: "I like my actors well paid."

Once he sounded a note strangely akin to modesty: "Do not think of my plays as Oklahomas averaging $120,000 a week or else flopping. My audiences are more or less select and . . . seldom average capacity." But elsewhere in his torrent of advice, the old man sounded reassuringly Shavian: "I rank a revival of Caesar and Cleopatra as the nearest thing . . . to a gilt-edged security."

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