The Lady's Not for Burning

Take a world-weary mercenary, and throw him into a household of mayor-uncle, convention-bound mom, two lusty, empty-headed sons, a servant, a naive girl just out of the convent and an accused witch about to be burned, put them in a setting of about 1400 AD and stir, and you get this wonderful work.

The elegant poetic language carved its way into a romantic nineteen year old's brain when I first saw this. Later versions just fall flat compared to this performance, partly because so much text was cut out of the later version I saw (a movie with Kenneth Branagh in it) that it lost its internal rhythm (yes, I READ too, and actually read the play later.) Oh, for it to be released on video or DVD!!!

I'm not kidding. My sister had to remind me to breathe as we sat and watched this excellent drama together. As a college theater major I had worked on this production and so was totally familiar with the plot and characters - but not done this way. The production was stunning; the acting superb - the entire thing was completely riveting. I only wish it was available on DVD as I could probably watch it again and again.

Richard Chamberlain was the perfect Thomas and one could easily see how he could entrance the Allaged witch, Jennet. I also enjoyed Kristoffer Tabori as the clerk, Richard.

It has been nearly 20 years since I saw this show but it still stands out in my mind as one of my all time favorite viewing experiences. Christopher Fry, the playwright, uses language that may sound a bit archaic to the modern ear, but it soon becomes quite normal as we settle in to be absorbed by an entrancing tale.

How can my memory of watching this on PBS almost thirty years ago be useful here? Maybe by comparing it to the recent remake. I was disappointed by the remake because the tone had changed. I remember the "original" as being a much darker comedy and therefore(?) a much more inspirational love story -- almost a bi-polar experience.

Even though it has been thirty years, I remember this well, as do my mother and sister. I probably saw it a dozen times over it's KCET run, every time we knew it was going to be on, and loved every showing.

So many in the cast are favorites of mine that I'll refrain from going into each performance, except to say that the casting was excellent all around. Growing up in Los Angeles I was fortunate to see Richard Chamberlain on stage several times, and never better than he was in this role. Kristoffer Tabori stood out as well, as he has done so consistently throughout his career.

If you have the opportunity to see this, DO NOT MISS IT. You will not be sorry.

Message to KCET: PLEASE RELEASE THIS ON VHS/DVD!!!!!

Fortunately, I don't have to rely on my memory (thank God --I'd be in serious difficulty if I did) of the original broadcast because I had the foresight (aka sheer dumb luck) to tape it from the PBS showing. I was living in Washington DC then and the local PBS station offered good, clear reception, so the video was better than I'd expected. A year ago, I translated all my videos to DVD and recently watched it for perhaps the sixth or seventh time.

I would be hard-pressed to voluntarily watch another version of the play, after seeing the superb performances of Richard Chamberlain and Eileen Atkins. I was only 31 at the time, and fell in love with the divine Ms Atkins and have never really gotten over it. Those eyes...

But it wasn't only the two leads: The whole cast was magnificent, with strong performances by Scott Hylands and Stephen McHattie as the two brothers, and a wonderfully doleful Tom Lacy as the chaplain. Laurie Prange is deliciously blond as the bemused Alizon and Rosemarie Murphy will live forever through her entrancing recitation of the line: I will burst my bud of calm and blossom into hysteria." Christopher Fry's language is the bones and sinews of the play, of course. The wit; the detached, almost antiseptic (and thus devastatingly understated) sketching of the evil stemming from human ignorance and greed; the inadequacy of reason against that evil; the even greater inadequacy of despair and nihilism --all of Fry's thoughts are there, although this version does take a few liberties with the text. (I was an English Major and was thus fated to read all the major British playwrights of the 20th century, perhaps because I took a course entitled Major British Playwrights of the Twentieth Century. As I remember, I received a C. In any case, I still have the text and read along with the performance.) The fleshing out of the play comes from the cast, and the sharp, careful direction of Joseph Hardy. In particular, the interplay between Chamberlain and Eileen Atkins is both compelling and appealing. One might think that Chamberlain is too "pretty" to play the part of Mendip, a hard-bitten, disillusioned veteran, but such is not the case. In fact, if anything, his good looks make the internal bitterness come through even more convincingly than if he were a glowering, heavy-featured ruffian. As for Ms Atkins... all she needs is her eyes: expressive (of course) mutable, so large they seem almost unreal, and so full of depth and wonder that you have no difficulty believing that Mendip must eventually succumb, or that she becomes the unwitting object of desire from the Devize brothers. The only wonder is that it takes so long. Two moments among many: when she stands before the Devizes and others with an oration that begins "May I, Jennet Jourdemayne, the daughter of a man who believed that the universe was governed by certain laws, be allowed to speak?" and ends with the wonderful line: "If, as a living creature, I wish in all good faith to continue living, where do you suggest I lodge my application?" The second: (spoken to Thomas Mendip): "And do you think your gesture of death is going to change it? (the world) Except for me." The look in her eyes as she says that to him should make every man afraid of women for the rest of his life. One glance, and you are lost forever --as is Thomas.

Somewhere, sometime, someone will see the wisdom of restoring and re-issuing this classic performance. Until then, I will slip my lil' ol' DVD in the player and fall in love all over again.