REP FIVE: ONE SANG, ONE DIDN’T

Rep Five--the Mark Taper Forum’s fifth official nibble at providing its audience an experience of repertory theater--has come and gone, with results much like those of Reps One, Two, Three and Four.

One show worked; one show didn’t.

The show that worked was Ken Ruta’s staging of Arthur Schnitzler’s “Undiscovered Country.” Ruta’s production hit some wrong notes, especially in the smaller character roles, where one could feel an effort on the actor’s part to be quaint, funny and above all noticeable, rather than an effort to blend into the world of the play--surely the aim of a real repertory actor.

Likewise, Granville Van Dusen as the play’s anti-hero tended to be more interesting when covering up his philandering with charm than when he came out from behind the mask. But all in all the production demonstrated a sensitive ear for Schnitzler’s music, so witty on the surface (almost too witty in Tom Stoppard’s adaptation) and so troubled underneath.

One left the theater in much the same mood as Schnitzler’s disillusioned heroine, beautifully played by Christina Pickles. Ah, true. The only happy marriages are the unexamined ones.

In other words, the play got to you. Not so Robert Egan’s staging of Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” This came off as an attempt to erect a social-sexual framework on which Shakespeare’s puzzling text would finally hang straight. You appreciated the effort, but the play remained unsolved.

The first image was that of Shakespeare’s Duke (played by Ruta) praying to a mute and androgynous guardian angel whose pale face seemed to be driving him to a nervous breakdown. We could take this figure as a diagnostic symbol of the miasma of sexuality and piety that infected the Duke’s Vienna and we could understand why he needed to get out of town for a few months.

So it seemed strange that the Duke’s real plan was to remain in town, dressed up as a monk and spying on his people. Was the nervous breakdown business a ruse? It didn’t seem so. Ruta’s anguish looked genuine. Was the monk’s habit a way of warding off the specter? Apparently not, for it kept kept materializing throughout the play, even--at the very end--to the fair nun, Isabella (Kate Mulgrew.)

It was one of those striking director’s images that are remembered long after the play, but that don’t quite connect with the ordinary business of the play. Egan’s conceptual framework, including Robert Blackman’s no-calendar costumes, ended up cluttering the tale rather than clarifying it.

Still, Egan’s staging honored the fact that this was a comedy with “dark corners.” That put it one-up on Joseph Papp’s silly production in Central Park this summer, where the Duke was a twit who enjoyed dressing up in monk’s drag. Shakespeare was much better served at the Taper.

Considered as separate productions, Rep Five brought us one qualified success and one interesting failure. How, though, did “Undiscovered Country” and “Measure for Measure” work in tandem? How well did they demonstrate the possibilities of a repertory company like the one that Gordon Davidson hopes one day to have at the Taper?

One thing we can ask from repertory is that the plays on the bill have some relationship to each other. That did apply with Rep Five. Both “Undiscovered Country” and “Measure for Measure” were set in Vienna; both were nominally comedies; both seem to have been written in a mood of disgust with the lecherous human race; both examined the question of whether to look the other way when lechery occurred. Indeed, one could almost argue that the two plays were so alike in their outlook that they lacked an element equally important in repertory: contrast.

Stylistically, however, the contrast was strong: An Elizabethan play written on an Italian model, versus an Austrian play rewritten by an Englishman. As a two-play program you couldn’t seriously fault it, especially since it opened our eyes to the finer qualities of Schnitzler, often wrongly identified as a purveyor of cynical boulevard comedy.

How about the two productions, as opposed to the scripts? Did they, too, play off one another?

In one instance they did. Each of Ralph Funicello’s settings used a big windowed wall behind the actors. In “Measure for Measure” it signified a world where life had to be conducted, as we say, in a goldfish bowl--someone might be standing on the other side of the glass, spying. But in “Undiscovered Country” the wall conveyed security and reassurance, framing a mountain view that only people of a certain position could afford.

Same structure, different trim. One looks for the same continuity in repertory actors, and these two shows offered it in the smaller roles. William Biff McGuire, for instance, was rock-solid both as Shakespeare’s aide, Escalus, a man of integrity, and as the hotel owner in “Undiscovered Country,” a man of no character at all when it came to the ladies. Same actor, different tack.

Oddly, though--and this is a major complaint about Rep Five--there wasn’t much carry-over of actors in the leading roles. Pickles and Van Dusen didn’t appear at all in “Measure for Measure.” Ruta and Mulgrew didn’t play in “Undiscovered Country.” So we were denied one of rep’s major pleasures, that of seeing Friday night’s star put on a new identity for the Saturday matinee.

The only actor who did have big roles in each play was Tom Atkins, Angelo in “Measure for Measure,” and Van Dusen’s best friend, Dr. Mauer, in “Undiscovered Country.” Atkins did well enough as the bashful Mauer, but as Angelo he was--no other word will do--dull. He was so dull that one at first suspected it was part of director Egan’s concept. Angelo would appear to be the perfect bureaucrat until he thought the Duke had left town, and then we’d see his devil emerge. But it never did. This Angelo was as prosaic pushing himself onto Isabella as when he was bidding the Duke goodby.

Strange. Whatever one’s concept for “Measure for Measure,” the relationship between the Duke and his second-in-command is obviously a major element in the story. If Angelo really is a cipher, why should the Duke bother to spy on him? Egan’s “Measure for Measure” would have been far more successful with an actor of higher temperament in the role.

It was bad casting of a particularly visible kind. Such casting lends a certain shadow of credence to the accusations that Los Angeles theater folk are always throwing at the Taper--that it’s overly interested in TV names, that it’s overly impressed by New York credits, etc.

Without any knowledge of the facts in this case, one can throw out the general rule that the casting for a season of repertory--even a short one--has to be done with exceptional care. Moreover, if the idea is to acclimate the audience in the repertory experience, the major actors ought to be seen in more than one role. Otherwise, to borrow a term from the world of Schnitzler, it’s only demi-rep.