The New Old Vic

Britain's Old Vic has come to the U.S. for a five-month, 13-city tour, trailing a cloud of complaints from British critics that the grand old company is not what it used to be. Perhaps not. But it is demonstrably less cobwebby and more experimental now than it has been for a dozen years. Its new productions--Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Shaw's Saint Joan--are generally characterized by innovation, and all worth seeing.

Reverse Adaptation. Most notable is Romeo and Juliet. Curiously enough, it has been directed by a young Italian, Franco Zeffirelli, who also designed the superb, dusty-streets-and-bright-sunlight Veronese sets. Over the years, productions of the play have steadily stiffened and solidified; the blood has gone out of the sword battles, and even the most passionate of declamations have gradually become dry word arias in a static opera without music. Zeffirelli has changed that. His direction is fresh and fluid despite the inherent difficulties in a play that begins in the stars then plods to an absurd conclusion underground.

His Romeo (John Stride) jumps and pants in reckless adolescence. His Juliet (Joanna Dunham) is the giddy, giggling, starry-eyed and breathless hoyden she ought to be. This is, after all, not an impulsive love between maturing young adults but a doomed one between hapless children. "These violent delights have violent ends," observes Friar Laurence.

Zeffirelli makes them exuberantly violent. When Romeo and Tybalt square off for battle, they crouch like street fighters, foils in one hand, poniards in the other. None of that crossed-swords jazz. This is a rumble, man. In the turnabout of dramatic history, Romeo and Juliet has become, in a sense, an adaptation of West Side Story. It is probably one of the best productions ever given the play.

Fair Lady. The Old Vic's Macbeth is less successful largely because Actor John Clements, as the thane who would be king, interprets the role in a cloppish manner that might be described as early Kirk Douglas. Disconcertingly, he even looks like Kirk Douglas, but with red hair. And his "Tomorrow and tomorrow" creeps at a petty pace. But the production is redeemed by Barbara Jefford.

Instead of the usual gaunt crone with nothing left in her face except character, this Lady Macbeth is young. She has sex, a hard jaw and a soft body with a surging bosom that she proffers without a downward glance. Her lust--at the moment, for power--is for once understandable to the masses and not just to the senior staff members at Menninger's.

Actress Jefford reverses herself, unfortunately, in the Old Vic's Saint Joan. The maid of Domremy, by Shaw's description in his preface, was one of the first of modern women, a take-charge overlord of men. But Jefford's Joan is a wide-eyed schoolgirl heroine, as coy and cute as Sabrina fair. The production also suffers from the paralyzed, tableau style of Douglas Scale's direction. In the end, Saint Joan is the least remarkable of the Old Vic's productions, but it is paradoxically the outstanding one of the lot. For Shakespeare's poetry cannot fully conceal the gaping flaws in Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Saint Joan is, in purely dramatic terms, the best of the three plays.

The Old Vic has already been to Boston and Washington. The company leaves Manhattan this month for Philadelphia, Rochester, Detroit, Chicago, East Lansing, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver and Seattle before returning to England.

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