Tangled Trio

By T.E. Kalem

CANDIDA

By George Bernard Shaw

Some of Shaw's most engrossing plays (Misalliance, Major Barbara and Man and Superman) are coruscating geysers of thought. Candida is not that sort of drama.

It is a marital situation comedy a bit like A Doll's House turned upside down. Candida (Joanne Woodward) treats her husband James Morell (Ron Parady) rather like a doll. When the poor devil is thoroughly terrified that she will leave him for the ardent young poet Marchbanks (Tait Ruppert), Candida elects to stay put, and domestic tranquillity is restored.

Morell is a pompous minister and a spellbinder in the pulpit. Marchbanks is a physical coward who baits people by ventilating their pretensions. His strength is a burning sense of vocation. Candida is an alluring marvel of self-control with wisdom flowing through every artery.

In the play's climactic scene, she is engagingly ironic: "I am up for auction .. .

What do you bid, James?" Her husband offers "my strength for your defense, my honesty for your surety" and other proprieties of a Victorian gentleman. Marchbanks answers: "My weakness! My desolation! My heart's need!" Candida chooses Morell as the weaker man.

The current revival at Manhattan's Circle in the Square Theater is never more than adequate. Returning to the stage after an absence of 17 years, Joanne Woodward is gracious, kindly and attractive but a trifle too effusive and lacking in the magnetism that would drive two men to distraction.

Ron Parady is a bold, virile Morell, but in the third key role of Marchbanks, Tait Ruppert stifles all conviction as to either his poetic genius or the tormenting passion of his puppy love. Like the production, he is all fuse and no flame.

--By T.E. Kalem

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