Tamburlaine

When Daniel Seltzer chose a reading of Tamburlaine the Crest for the first production in the Loeb's Shakespeare-Marlowe Festival, he set himself a number of problems. The tone of Marlowe's two-part Tamburlaine is almost uninterruptedly bombastic; what scant relief there is comes from the DcMille-like spectacles of battles, suicides, and a scene in which Tamburlaine's chariot is drawn by four captive kings.

By staging a concert reading of Tamburlaine, Seltzer robbed himself of the visual splendor and seemed to sentence his audiences to a few hours of exposure to almost constant shouting. But heavy cutting of Marlowe's lines, some clever technical effects, and a splendid reading by David Stone as Tamburlaine almost make this production first-rate theatre.

All the production's strengths, however, cannot offset the play's weakness. Despite the prodigious cuts, a number of almost-identical scenes in which assorted rival kings condemn Tamburlaine to assorted dooms make the reading drag horribly.

Sloppy performances in several small parts do not help either, and these minor shoddinesses are particularly embarrassing in Tamburlaine. The play's ranting scenes are so close to being ridiculous that even a minor gaffe can make the audience explode with laughter. When Neil Johnson makes the emperor Callapine look and sound like Richard Nixon (leaning forward, shoulders hunched, slurring words like "mah empahr") or when Percy Granger as a lord assigned to protect Queen Zenocrate, gives her up to Tamburlaine ("We yield unto the, happy Tamburlaine"), in a voice that sounds like a public-address system announcer's, the play breaks down completely for a moment.

The smaller roles have almost all been shortened considerably; few characters have time to make any impression on the stage. Instead they seem to melt into choruses behind Tamburlaine, enemies foretelling his downfall, counsellors feeding his ego. Once in a while a reader stands out from the faceless crowd--Dean Gitter as Cosroe and Phillip Hecksher as Techelles bring some life to their parts. A few of the 42 parts are also noticeably bad; Richard Backus races through the brief prologue at breakneck speed and Jeremiah Tower seems to feel that Mycetes must be made monotonous in order to show that he is weak. But the lines become so repetitious that the characters for the most part float by unnoticed.

David Stone tackles the role of Tamburlaine with marvelous common sense. Since he does not have to act, he is freed from the gesturing and stamping about the stage that are usually used to underscore Tamburlaine's noisy speeches. He keeps his face almost expressionless through most of the production, and reads his lines with all the restraint possible. He still can't tone the speeches down quite enough; there is simply too much noise and it tires the listener after awhile. But except in his utterly unconvincing expressions of love for Zenocrate during the first act, Stone's vocal explosions never seem unnatural.

Frances Gitter as Zenocrate starts slowly, making no effort to smooth the queen's sudden transformation from hatred of Tamburlaine to love for him. This particular roughness is largely Marlowe's fault; as the play moves along, Miss Gitter's acting gets smoother. In her death scene, the production reaches its climax. Stone's outbursts of emotion and Miss Gitter's lovely reading are supplemented by some dazzling work with the lighting by David Levine.

The death scene, like several other emotion-ridden moments, is set up by a quiet conversation that precedes it. In fact Basil Ashmore, who cut the two full-length parts of Tamburlaine into a two-and-a-half-hour show, retained most of the play's quieter moments while cutting back on the noise. The changes he has worked are radical; Bajazeth and Zabina disappear from part one, the Christian kings and their Muslim allies form part two. Almost all the battle scenes are excised, and so, unfortunately, are some important parts of Zenocrate's role. It is inevitable that much is lost in the cutting, but Ashmore might have used his blue pencil more heavily on some of the kings-prophesy. Tamburlaine's downfall scenes.

With some of the roughness worked out--and Seltzer might start by asking his bit actors to stand still when they are not speaking, and not to shuffle their feet, fidget with their hands, or bite their nails--Tamburlaine should be even better at tonight's second performance. Considering its problems, this first reading was a good one; the Loeb's festival has started well.