The Apple Cart

No one believes in monarchy anymore, with the possible exception of Haile Selassie. Not even George Bernard Shaw, though he gives the king all the lines in The Apple Cart. As Shaw says in his preface, "The Apple Cart exposes the unreality of both democracy and royalty as our idealists conceive them."

The Adams House production of The Apple Cart has been billed as the performance of a Shavian prophecy, uttered in 1929 and vindicated in 1967. They must be joking. Kings certainly haven't staged a comeback, and Shaw's references to colonial revolts, Atlantic alliances, and boorish American Presidents just don't qualify him as a oracle.

In fact, The Apple Cart is a treatise on the impossibility of any kind of government. Democracy, autocracy, and monarchy are all making the best of a bad situation, and none of them is doing very well. Shaw is no anarchist; he simply wants us to recognize, as King Magnus does, the invisible shackles that trip government and turn it into a farce.

Magnus, the imaginary English king who tries to beat the democrats at their own game, is the character who teaches Shaw's lesson, and Kenneth Tigar makes a fine instructor. Tigar's Magnus flatters, cajoles, and bullies his barnyards of ministers and then, like an ironic lemur, sits back to watch them do just what he intended all along. Tigar knows how to get the most out of Shaw's wit--he is quick enough to maintain a rapid exchange, yet patient enough to let the lines do the job by themselves when the situation calls for it.

Tigar has a good deal of help, chiefly from the women. Like many of Shaw's women, the two female cabinet members--Amy Sue Allen and Phyllis Ward--are clearer thinkers than the men. Miss Allen, as the strait-laced Lysistrata, and Miss Ward, the giggly Amanda, are both very good. And Norma Levin, as Magnus' grand mistress Orinthia, plays her scene with Tigar magnificently.

Peter Jaszi, the American ambassador, gives a brassily expansive and delightful caricature of the Yankee diplomat, and Jim Woods' Proteus, the harried prime minister, is generally solid.

The one weak link among the major characters is Boanerges, a demagogue who barges into the cabinet as president of the Board of Trade. James Shuman lacks the heartiness and the broad, bumbling arrogance that should make Boanerges funny. Without him to play against, the rest of the cabinet--Dale Gieringer, Roy Goldfinger, Brain McGunigle, and Prentice Claflin seems a bit hollow.

James Lardner's direction is unobtrusive but effective. Aside from some really sorry smaller parts (and the fact that no one in the cast quite knows his lines yet), Lardner has made each character a distinct one--a must if half the humor is not to be lost. The set, conceived by Howard Cutler and built by Mark Page, is attractive and simple, perfectly suited to the limitations of a dining hall theatre.

The production is a good one, and sometimes, thanks largely to Tigar, excellent. Shaw can be very dull and wordy, but Lardner & Co. have made the battle of ideas both hard-fought and entertaining.