Old Play in Manhattan

Androcles and the Lion (by Bernard Shaw; produced by the American Repertory Theatre) gets about the lightest treatment that Shaw ever gave to a serious subject. Thirty-three years ago he pilfered the fable of Androcles--who by being kind to a lion in the forest was spared when they met in the arena--to embroider it with comment on religion and early Christian martyrs. He wound up reducing the fable to a kind of farce.

For Shaw, eying both his fanatical Christians and his playboy Romans, the bread is buttered on both sides. Yet for all Shaw's playfulness, the Christians are allowed their serious moments, and for all Shaw's amusement, they earn a measure of his respect. But he is mainly in the mood for high jinks, and toward the end the lion is all he needs to turn the whole thing into a circus. Androcles (Ernest Truex) waltzes gaily with the lion (John Becher); Caesar is first chased by it and then takes the credit for taming it; and at the last he orders all his followers to turn Christian.

Under Margaret Webster's direction, last week's Androcles was played even more broadly than it is written. Meek Androcles and his shrewish wife, for example, became a kind of antique Maggie & Jiggs. But if the satire was blunted, none of the fun was lost.

Serving as a curtain raiser to Androcles was Sean O'Casey's Pound on Demand--a piece of slapstick about two drunks skittering about a post office while trying to cash a money order. The skit, like the more potted of the two performers, fell flat on its face.

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