From England, via the Music Center in Los Angeles, comes “Abelard and Heloise” by Ronald Millar. It opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theater last week, starring Diana Rigg and Keith Michell and directed by Robin Philips.
Some seasons ago Millar was responsible for a first-rate adaptation of C.P. Snow’s novel, “The Affair.” In this latest play, he has taken the 12th-century French romance of the famous scholar Abelard, and his lovely pupil, Heloise, and made of it a literate but an oddly bloodless play.
There can be nothing but praise for the acting, and much of the credit must go to Phillips. However, he seems to me also responsible for a portion of the sterility of what attempts to be a play of the flesh as well as of the mind.
Philips seems far more interested in the intellectual than in the emotional aspect of the play. Even in the brief scene when the lovers sink to the ground in a nude embrace, the effect is less lustful than lackluster.
Again, Millar’s language is always lucid and literate but it cries for poetry and imagery. It somehow belongs more to the shelf then to the stage, and I was never moved either emotionally or lyrically.
However, the evening is dotted with fine performances.
Miss Rigg is lovely to look at and acts splendidly even in the final scene which deteriorates into a debate about moral love versus the love of God (since Abelard has by now been emasculated, his argument seems somewhat academic). Michell is virile and personable, and gives the impression of a scholar as well as a lover.
“Abelard and Heloise” is well produced and excellently performed. If only its action were on a par with its acting.
Capsule comments:
Jack Gaver, UPI: “It brings together good writing, fine acting and skilled direction in a manner that one gets all too seldom.”
Douglas Watt, Daily News: “I found it tiresome, but then I felt the same way about “The Sound of Music.’”
Clive Barnes, New York Times: “Millar tells his story well. I only wish he had told it with more poetry and passion.”
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