Hollow Crown

There's not much to say about entertainments. Either they are entertaining, or they're not. Downstage's The Hollow Crown was. But since there was no single author, no central theme and little apparent significance in the arrangement of episodes, we can only congratulate their Britannic Majesties on the fascinating variety of their behaviour, and their observers on the liveliness of their record.

Beyond this, we can consider the actors. If we are grateful to Roy Patrick for his direction we are less so for acting frequently distinguished by a complacent overrelish which we might have thought deliberate in Henry VIII had it not already ruined Richard II.

Fanny Burney seemed the part best suited to Nicolette McKenzie's talents: unfortunately she almost ruined Jane Austen with a version of the same skittishness. She produced a throaty Queen Bess at Tilbury and achieved seriousness as Anne Boleyn.

Kenneth Tillson flowered in the secret memorandum sent by Henry VII to his ambassadors concerning the proposed marriage between himself and the Queen of Naples. Jonathan Hardy, with whom he collaborated in that scene, was almost without exception excellent. He succeeded in a variety of parts and moods, from the embarrassed circumspection of the ambassador to the description of the execution of Lady Jane Grey; from James I's lusty counterblast to Tobacco to a magnificent reading from the Morte d'Arthur, with which the evening ended.—A.M.B.