Old Play in Manhattan

The Makropoulos Secret (by Karel Capek) is a kind of philosophic mystery story--by the author of R.U.R.--first produced in the '20s. It is the kind of phililosophic mystery story that Director Tyrone Guthrie, with his instinct for theater and his itch for new slants, would clearly have enjoyed remodeling. The Guthrie treatment did not mean giving the play a more modern look or a different philosophic spin. It meant reverting to a 19th century mode of acting and a Continental air of high twaddle--one moment for their value as drama, another for what is the outlines of a joke. Since the chief character in Capek's tale of a strange, century-old lawsuit is a grandiloquent opa singer, tasseled flimflam is never very difficult. Since the opera singer is curiously omniscient about the past and is forever flinging forth, with a veiled countenance, a Who-am-I?, there is a nice audience guessing game in the making.

And since the opera singer is acted to the richly encrusted hilt by Eileen Herlie, a script that often plods as it perplexes, and that perplexes less and less as it proceeds, just manages to squeak through. With a stylish, long-discontinued look, Actress Herlie can rivet attention; with a bass-fiddle-deep laugh, she suddenly arouses laughter. The Guthrie treatment fares best when there is nothing much to treat: the air of secrecy proves more rewarding than the secret, the theatrical Herlie-burly than the philosophical coda. When the play finally turns serious, it seems, more than anything else, like a last-minute spoilsport. Were the play better or the philosophy more challenging, Guthrie's approach might smack of outrage; as things stand, it is perhaps the only armor against boredom.

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