Basil Rathbone: An Evening with Will Shakespeare

A program consisting of excerpts from various Shakespeare plays. Directed by Margaret Webster. Opened April 6, 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts, and played for five weeks in various cities along the U.S. East Coast. Final performance was May 9 in Washington DC. Company Manager, Richard Skinner; Stage Manager, Thelma Chandler; Press Representative, Reginald Denenholz; Production Coordinator, Mary Hunter; Production Assistants: Billy Herman, Lily Lodge, William Green.

Lawrence Langner, director of the American Shakespeare Festival Foundation, conceived of the idea of An Evening with Will Shakespeare to raise money for the building fund of the American Shakespeare Festival and Academy. The plan was to build an American counterpart of the Stratford-on-Avon Memorial Theater. He rallied a staff of theater experts, including Margaret Webster and Mary Hunter, around the idea that an evening of highlights from the Bard's works would make a fine evening of theater and at the same time help raise funds for building a Shakespeare Festival Theater in this country.

In an interview with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mr. Langner said, "The thing that started me off was As You Like It, with Katharine Hepburn. It cost us $112,000 to produce and took two years to pay off, finally paid off only because Miss Hepburn was willing to go out and tour in it. Then I went to Stratford three Summers ago and realized from our own experience we could do the plays much less expensively if we had a festival in the Summer and went on tour in the Winter. We have to raise $500,000 for the Shakespeare Theater, and this current tour helps to publicize it. We're asking for contributions—we have an insert in the programs. The six stars are appearing for much less than their usual pay and all profits will go to the fund. It cost $1,100,000 to build the Stratford Memorial Theater, and approximately three-quarters of it, about $800,000, was raised here in America. It took them eight years to raise that money, and I think I can do it in half that time, but I'm not going to let anything discourage me." (The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 12, 1953)

When plans for an American Stratford were first announced, Shakespeare-loving actors were thrilled to participate in the project. The format of the program was tested successfully at the New Parsons Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, December 5-6, 1952. Twelve players, including Claude Rains, Eva LeGallienne, Faye Emerson, Margaret Webster, Leueen MacGrath, Nina Foch, Arnold Moss, Staats Cotsworth, Wesley Addy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Frederick Rolf, and Dion Allen participated in the three performances in Hartford. The reaction of the audiences at that time was used as a guide to building the presentation for the Spring tour.

Basil Rathbone, Faye Emerson, Eva LeGallienne, Margaret Webster, John Lund and Viveca Lindfors came together to start rehearsals on March 23, 1953. Margaret Webster directed the program, as well as appearing in it and providing the narrations between scenes. An Evening with Will Shakespeare was not a program of readings. Excerpts from Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Henry V, Macbeth, Henry VIII, Taming of the Shrew and others were fully enacted by the performers in modern evening dress on a bare stage. The settings were suggested in the words of Shakespeare, as narrated by a member of the acting ensemble.

A six-week tour was booked to begin with, but it ended up being only five weeks. The tour included the following cities:

Langner had planned to bring the production to Broadway for a week in May, following the performances in Washington DC, but he cancelled that plan. Broadway would have been the sixth week of the tour.

Because of a prior engagement, Faye Emerson had to leave the cast in early May. She was replaced by Betty Field for the second week in Washington DC.

Shakespeare at Academy

Since there is a distinct possibility that the strolling bard players will some time this Spring turn up on Broadway. I'll refrain from a regular review of their An Evening with Will Shakespeare, given last night at the Academy of Music, but I'd like to toss out a few comments and impressions. It's a stimulating, well-balanced program of early and late Shakespeare in various moods, and all six of the stars acquit themselves handsomely. It was to be expected of old Shakespearean hands like Basil Rathbone, Eva LeGallienne and Margaret Webster, but Viveca Lindfors and John Lund are an enjoyable surprise, particularly in the courtship scene from Henry V, as England's bluff Henry woos the playful French princess, and there is pleasant work from the highly decorative Faye Emerson.

Though the players are generally in modern dress, or comparatively so, they give not a reading but a regular, fully acted performance of the various extracts and succeed notably well most of the time in conjuring up the time and spirit of the plays. Miss LeGallienne does such a vivid job of it, in fact, in the Macbeth portion, that I was startled at one point when a courier entered in a dinner jacket. Her anguished sleep-walking speech and hard-pressed Katharine in Henry VIII are stirring and richly eloquent.

Mr. Rathbone's commanding presence and immaculate delivery are turned to expert use in his varied appearances—he is especially fine as Brutus in Julius Caesar—while Miss Webster, a fluent, likable narrator, sets the stage for the different scenes. The large audience was justifiably cordial.

—Louis Sheaffer, Brooklyn Eagle, April 17, 1953

"Whether he is Cardinal Wolsey, Brutus, or Macbeth, Basil Rathbone is a masterly performer." —The Morning News (Wilmington, DE), April 21, 1953

The program was done without microphones, settings or costumes. Depending solely upon the magic of the word, the players performed against a plain background of black drapes. There was no music, except for an occasional song, sung by Del Horstmann to his own guitar accompaniment. There was one intermission.

"Under the direction of Miss Webster, the players suited their actions to their words in a lively way, ranging over the stage, cutting loose once or twice with broad comedy antics (as in the scene from The Taming of the Shrew), or building up a scene, with gesture and expression, as carefully and as vividly as could be done in a full-dress production. Such a scene was the Macbeth excerpt, in which Eva Le Gallienne shared honors with Basil Rathbone." —The Baltimore Sun, April 24, 1953

"[Theatergoers] at the Colonial heard favorite scenes from Henry V with the enchanting Viveca Lindfors as Katherine, Princess of France to John Lund's Henry of England—and the unforgettable Brutus of Basil Rathbone, as well as his marvelous Macbeth." —The Boston Globe, April 7, 1953

"The acting in this production is less important than the lines. Shakespeare is so powerful that given competent acting, which was available last night, his lines create their own magic, even without scenery or costumes. The trappings are less important than the poetry." —Meriden Journal, April 18, 1953

"One of the most effective of the program selections in this respect is the Advice to the Players speech from Hamlet recited with such polished comic verve by Mr. Rathbone. Bardolators know that Hamlet could be a brilliantly witty, as well as a melancholy, Dane but infinite sections of the population do not. The inclusion of the players' speech in the present program cannot fail to modify any notion of unalloyed somberness in Hamlet's nature and the nature of his play." —Jay Carmody, Evening Star (Washington DC), May 3, 1953

"In the performances of Basil Rathbone, Viveca Lindfors, Faye Emerson, Margaret Webster, John Lund, and Eva Le Gallienne, there is humble and affectionate service to The Bard. They do not merely read him ... they act him, in dinner clothes and on the plainest of stages, but in the way of players with the grace not to be intrusive. ... The program begins appropriately with soliloquies 'On Plays and Players' in which Shakespeare's own words say what audiences are entitled to. The best of these, not surprisingly, is Hamlet's advice to the players, expertly voiced by Mr. Rathbone and well heeded thereafter by all others in the cast. ... Rathbone reaches his best as Brutus in the quarrel scene with Cassius on the plains of Sardis." —The Evening Star, Washington DC, April 28, 1953

An Evening with Will Shakespeare

Boston, April 7

The masterly hand of Margaret Webster stands out in this exceedingly distinguished, and even memorable, routining of eight scenes from Shakespeare as far as the well-known candle sends its gleam.

Surrounded with two brilliant Shakespearean veterans and a half dozen les experienced but no less valiant players. Miss Webster has singled out entirely unhackneyed scenes and staged them without scenery or props in a way to make them as powerful a full-dress productions. In some instances, notably the scene between Brutus and Cassius, even more so, since such scenes might pass all but unnoticed without the special spotlight she provides.

This quality of spotlighting a given scene is, in fact one of the things that makes this so uniquely satisfying an affair. Each scene, gracefully and often humorously introduced by Miss Webster herself, emerges as a highly polished gem in its own right and, due to the contrast, startlingly emphasizes the incredible range of the author's genius.

Basil Rathbone, Eva LeGallienne and Miss Webster are old hands in this style, and their work is a joy to see and hear. Mr. Rathbone's Brutus is superb, while Miss LeGallienne reaches her peak as Lady Macbeth. Though their tradition as well as their enunciation is hardly Shakespearean. John Lund, Faye Emerson and Viveca Lindfors manage nonetheless to capture much of the special atmosphere required.

John Lund overcomes a frankly American approach and gets away with it, once over the hurdle of his first speech. Ann Faye Emerson, overcomes the barrier (to Shakespeare) of her Americanism by means of combined technique and ability to understand the direction. Viveca Lindfors, meantime, with or without a slight accent, scores heavily as the boyish Viola and wows as the object of Henry's suit.

No costumes are used, save for the role of Viola, though capes or wraps are occasionally employed. The carpeted stage is set merely with four chairs, a carved table and two wooden lecterns before a deep blue curtain, and these props are unobtrusively moved around as occasion demands by lesser members of the cast, which includes Paul Ballantyne, Lily Lodge, Frederick Rolf and Del Horstman, who accompanies himself in old English ballads on the guitar.

Show captures complete audience attention from the outset and holds it throughout.

Elie.

—Variety, April 15, 1953

At the time of the Spring tour of An Evening with Will Shakespeare, the location of the proposed Shakespeare Festival Theater and Academy had not yet been settled.

Lawrence Langner planned to locate the theater and school, in which younger players could be properly trained to play Shakespeare, in the vicinity of Westport, Connecticut, where he had operated a summer theater for years. He estimated that about ten acres of land would be needed.

The theatre became a reality in Stratford, Connecticut, about an hour by train from New York City. Construction began in 1954 and cost $1 million. The theater opened on July 12, 1955.

The Shakespeare Festival Theater and Academy's chief building was patterned after the old Globe Theater in London, where most of Shakespeare's greatest plays had their opening nights. But, instead of being an exact copy, it utilized modern innovations—seats in the pit, for instance, whereas the original pit's patrons had to stand; a roof against bad weather, as well as the noise of passing airplanes, whereas the old Globe was open to the sky; modern illumination, air conditioning in the Summer, heating in the Winter.

Plays were produced at the Shakespeare Festival Theatre until 1989, when the theater ceased operations. The building, which had been vacant for thirty years, burned to the ground on January 13, 2019.