Elegantly Spicy

By T.E. Kalem

LOVE FOR LOVE by WILLIAM CONGREVE

Congreve was the alchemist of Restoration comedy, refining grossness into gaiety. He gave bawdry rare class. His rakish characters pursue their seductions, cuckoldries and feverish fornications with the aristocratic aplomb of English gentlemen on a fox hunt. Their talk is nakedly lubricious, yet it shimmers with wit. The absolute lack of any sense of sin gives even the most scandalous scenes in Congreve's plays a pagan air of preadamite innocence.

Love for Love displays all these characteristics, and it is difficult to imagine a more delightful revival than that mounted by the New Phoenix Repertory Company. Harold Prince has directed it with a marvelously light touch, and the cast bestows elegance on the incessant sexual innuendo. To unravel the plot would be as tricky as negotiating the Minotaur's labyrinth, but it remains understandable throughout the evening.

Fencing Match. At its core is a mettlesome love story. Laden with debt and disowned by a mean father, Valentine (Joel Fabiani) is desperately attracted by a lovely charmer named Angelica, played by Glenn Close. His gallantry is matched by her guile. She tests and taunts him to prove the honesty of his love. He remains steadfast.

This amorous fencing match is continually interrupted by a farcical gallimaufry of gulls, lechers, tricksters and cynics. Some of their names indicate their foibles: Scandal, Tattle and Mrs. Frail, a succulent baggage of seeming accessibility who hopes to bed her way to wealth. Thanks to the brushstroke acting skill of John McMartin, the drollest portrait of all is Foresight, a doddering astrologist so fervently absorbed in his zodiacal predictions that he fails to notice that his wife is cuckolding him under the age-old sign of Venery.

This season has brought plays of great variety to Broadway. Variety is the spice of life and Love for Love is the spiciest. .T.E.Kalem

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