SELLARS SENDS HIS ‘SIGNAL’ IN WASHINGTON

You are the artistic director of a new and extremely visible resident theater. Its opening production (not staged by you) gets dismal reviews and isn’t doing any business at all. It’s clear to you that the show isn’t all it should have been. You decide to:

1--Cut your losses and close the show early.

2--Let the show play out its run, in order to keep faith with your subscribers and to demonstrate that having hits isn’t what your theater is about.

3--Resign.

Well, you’re not about to do that. And you’re not going to close the show early, because that’s what David Merrick would do. So you bite the bullet and keep the show open, hoping to God that the next one--which you are directing--will make them forget this one.

That’s what you do if you’re the typical artistic director. Peter Sellars, the 27-year-old chief of the American National Theater, is not the typical artistic director. He closed the show.

The show was Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part I,” staged by Sellars’ associate director, Timothy Mayer. It opened March 23 to icy reviews (Mel Gussow in the New York Times: “One expects more imagination and a higher level of production . . . from such overtly venturesome young men as Mr. Sellars and Mr. Mayer”). After a couple of weeks, the show was only playing to about 400 people a night at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre, less than half a house.

So Sellars shut “Henry” down. A West Coast reviewer watching its final Saturday matinee felt vaguely nettled. To be sure, it was clear after about a half an hour that it wasn’t much of a production: Shakespeare by the book, and not all that well read. Taking it off the boards wouldn’t be an artistic loss. And the acres of empty red plush seats showed that Washington wasn’t buying it.

But what kind of signal (in the local phrase) was Sellars sending to his subscribers and to the general public about the constancy of this so-called American National Theater? He was supposed to be rehearsing ANT’s next production, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” somewhere in the building. Maybe I could catch him afterward for an interview. Meanwhile, the show droned on.

What was the problem? “Henry IV, Part I” is one of Shakespeare’s richest harvests, and these were capable American actors: John Heard as Prince Hal, John McMartin as King Henry and Falstaff (interesting doubling), Patti LuPone as Lady Mortimer. Director Mayer also provided some intriguing program notes, indicating that he had a relish for the play and some real ideas about it.

For instance, he pointed to the connection between Shakespeare and the barnstorming American theater of the 19th Century. Maybe that explained why this “Henry IV” had the look of a road show. Flat floor. Cut-out scenery. Lightweight costumes. An unpainted plywood throne for King Henry. An obviously fake pate for Falstaff.

It looked like the beginning of a theatrical statement, maybe to the effect that this “Henry” would be about acting, not about props. But the acting didn’t measure up. We got neither the thunder-and-lightning of the 19th-Century barnstormers, nor the subtle interplay of a 20th-Century ensemble. Each player would pronounce his lines as clearly as his training allowed and would pass the ball to the next player, as if to say “Your turn.”

McMartin was the busiest, going between the somber King Henry and the shameless Falstaff. One problem with the doubling was that it meant adding extra minutes to the show while McMartin changed costumes. (The diversionary byplay included some rather good songs by Van Dyke Parks and Fredric Myrow, music director of the Los Angeles Actors’ Theatre.)

The larger problem was that McMartin, usually a fine actor, didn’t find a footing in either role. His King Henry was more edgy than anguished, and his Falstaff suggested a masquerade, as if Malvolio had dressed up as the Fat Knight.

McMartin at least had some edge to him. Heard’s Prince Hal was a younger version of Capt. Kirk on “Star Trek,” so sensible that he never would have hung out with Falstaff in the first place. Naturally, there wasn’t any communication in the tavern scenes--or, for that matter, the court scenes. Capt. Kirk, however, would have put a little muscle into the battlefield scenes. After summoning his troops to battle, this Prince Hal virtually ambled off stage.

One recalled the dash of the Theatre du Soleil’s “Henry IV” at the Olympic Arts Festival last summer. These well-fed American actors plodded through the play--physically, vocally, spiritually. LuPone showed some fire as Lady Mortimer, and Mark Metcalfe had an edge of danger as Poins, but those are minor roles. In the main, it was the kind of Shakespeare that only the BBC could love.

Sellars defended it ingeniously in our interview, finding an excitement in its melange of voices and acting styles: “all those incredibly divergent things converging on Shakespeare’s doorstep.” In the end, though, he acknowledged the divergent things had “failed to come together.” Since the audience wasn’t coming either, he gave the show the hook.

His defense of “Henry” wasn’t persuasive. But his defense of its cancellation was. It included an important fact that I’d forgotten. Closing the show early didn’t cheat those subscribers who hadn’t seen it out of a show. ANT doesn’t have subscribers. It has “members,” who receive four passes a year (and up), to be used for whatever events they want to see.

It’s a cardinal part of Sellars’ marketing philosophy, and he thinks we are going to see more of it in resident theater. “Subscription was indispensable when resident theater was new. But it’s become an impediment now. Nobody wants to have to attend the theater on the third Tuesday of every month, nobody my age anyway.”

Not only does subscription impede the freedom of the audience, it impedes the freedom of the theater to find its own voice, Sellars believes. “We’ll be offering six or eight shows here this year--I hope, more. Some of them everybody will want to see, and we’ll give them a good run. Some of them nobody will want to see, and we’ll bring them back for repairs.

“That was the way it worked in Shakespeare’s and Moliere’s theater. I think it’s an honest way to work. I’m not interested in running shows for the sake of running shows. I’m not interested in running quote ads in the newspapers that even we don’t believe.

“If this had happened a year or two from now, we would have had another show to put on. Since we don’t, it’s a smart allocation of resources to close the show. Yes, the director understands. It hurts, but he understands. And he’s still on our letterhead.

“I didn’t see the show until its first preview. It was evident then that it had problems. But I’m not going to become one of those resident-theater directors who give the visiting director notes after every rehearsal . . . unless he asks for notes. I plan to hire the best people and let them do what they have to do, and let the work be what it has to be.

“This show didn’t congeal. But seeds were planted that will develop over the next few years, even over the next few weeks. I’m interested in developing a theatrical structure here that supports the work. Most theatrical structures today don’t. It’s going to take time.”

With that, Sellars went back to rehearsing “The Count of Monte Cristo,” which will star Richard Thomas, Roscoe Lee Browne and LuPone. He assures you that it will be one terrific show. His confidence is infectious, yet the dead-march of “Henry” is still in the air. Stay tuned.