The Washington Post

Washington, D.C.

 

"One on the Aisle" by Richard L. Coe

 

HIGH COMEDY, HIGH PLACES

 

New York, March 29 - Glittering acting and verbal brilliance make "The Lion in Winter" a theatrical joy.

 

Not since Christopher Fry first dazzled with his syllabic fireworks has there been so listenable a play as James Goldman's imaginative script and not since the Lunts' latest round has there been such playing as Rosemary Harris and Robert Preston in the two major roles.

 

This, to New York's shame, has had a shaky start at the Ambassador Theater, but cheering and increasingly larger audiences are getting the word around.  Still, those who relish words in the theater should grab this immediately to swell the tide and not miss a rare evening.

 

The story concerns long-warring parents battling at Yuletide over the writing of father's will.  Which son will get what?  How is a pesky betrothal to be worked out since the fiancee of one of the boys is reluctant to stop being his father's mistress?

 

That father is England's Henry II, mother is Eleanor of Aquitaine, the fiancee is sister to Philip of France is one aspect of novelty.  (Yes, the same Henry but now older as in Anouihl's "Becket", Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" and Fry's more recent one on the same topic, title of which I forget.)

 

Dashingly indeed, Goldman avoids archaic language.  He has chosen timeless English and it is a triumph for the American theater that this American writes it so well.  Goldman's early interest was music and his prose is, in fact, music - Mozart in his comic vein.

 

Henry remarks to Eleanor, "we could tangle spiders in the webs you weave."  This might describe the complex plotting of this mother, literally imprisoned for ten years and let off for Christmas ("It's more like Lent"), who is scheming for her eldest, Richard the Lionhearted, to succeed Henry, who prefers son John.

 

Author Goldman forewarns:  "The people in this play, their personalities and passions, while consistent with the facts we have, are fictions...in Henry's time there were no laws of primogeniture...a fact responsible for much of what Henry did.

 

The best role is Eleanor and Miss Harris, her speech now steel, now butter, is simply gorgeous as she schemes, retreats, compromises and initiates.  "Do ANYTHING!" she commands Richard, who swiftly does.

 

"How my captivity," she tells Henry, "has changed you."  Of someone she observes: "She smiled with success but she chewed with distinction."  Of her husband's mistress, whom Eleanor literally brought up, she remarks: "I'm rather proud.  I taught her all the rhetoric she knows."  Dazed again, Henry allows that he loves her and she replies: "Save your aching arches.  That road is closed."

 

As with Becket, Henry here must take second place to Eleanor but Preson plays his with vital, scheming relish, feeling "thoughts like molten lead" within the walls of Chinon.  Henry gives as good as he gets and the Preston-Harris duels are a joy of bravura sparring.

 

All of director Noel Willman's cast are excellent.  Dennis Cooney's Geoffrey is splendidly wily, James Rado's Richard sternly righteous and Bruce Scott's John boyishly craven, all fittingly differentiated as the three sons.  Suzanne Grossman makes a happy American bow as the French princess and Christopher Walken uses smiling reticence to create a distinctive King Philip.