Henry the Second

On Broadway in Anouilh's Becket (TIME, Oct. 17), Sir Laurence Olivier played the title role against Anthony Quinn's Henry II. In Boston last week--Quinn having exited for Hollywood--Olivier played Henry II against Arthur Kennedy's Becket. Olivier had always been intrigued by the part, and when Director Peter Glenville offered it to him for a short road tour, he grabbed it. Such switching is historical enough; Edwin Booth and Henry Irving once played Othello and lago back and forth for weeks.

Though he lost the title role, Olivier gained by the switch. It is really the title role in name only: in his drama of the medieval King who idolized his chief counselor and then suffered him to be killed, Anouilh ignored too much that was vital in Becket--his great career as Chancellor, his shift from worldling to ascetic, his clashes, as Archbishop of Canterbury, with Henry. If Anouilh's Henry is not quite a full portrait either, it is for an Olivier a fat part--a touch too fat, for it hides Henry's bone structure. But Olivier catches him in a whole succession of picturesque moments and shifting moods. As against Quinn's clodlike vigor. Olivier's Henry has an easy swagger, a skipping verve; he can be cruel, capricious, ironic, every inch a king less for greatness of will than assertiveness of whim; and one who loved Becket, not just because of lifelong loneliness--domineering mother, dried-up wife, hen-brained children--but because Becket expertly pleased and amused him. And with scene after scene of pageantry thrown in, the part becomes a Field-of-the-Cloth-of-Gold day for Sir Laurence.

The play gains by the switch also, emerging a livelier theater piece. But it seems just a theater piece more than ever, lacking real substance, and chiefly good for what is buoyant and boisterous about it, though it now has a more flaring sense of worldliness and wiles. But its playful side eats into its prayerful side, leaving Becket half snuffed out. If clear-spoken, Arthur Kennedy--who has not yet worked into the part--seems much too sober and colorless. With this second try at Henry, it becomes Henry II's show.

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