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BEDTIME STORY [[picture of man and woman]] HENRY GROSSMAN Peter Whelan's The Herbal Bed mixes fact and fiction to explore the nature of conscience, commitment and truth by Mervyn Rothstein In the summer of 1613 Susanna Hall, eldest daughter of William Shakespeare and wife of John Hall, a well-known physician in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, was accused of having an affair with Rafe Smith, a neighbor. Susanna vehemently denied the charge and sued her accused, Jack Lane, her husband's dismissed apprentice, for defamation of character, in the diocesan court of Worcester Cathedral. But what was Susanna doing with Rafe late one night in the Halls' medicinal herbal garden, amid the herbigrass and the St.-John's-Wort? The case, the record of which still exists in the cathedral archive, is the basis of The Herbal Bed, a drama by the English playwright Peter Whelan that was a hit both at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford and in London's West End and has opened on Broadway at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in aa new production. Whelan, who has written six plays for the R.S.C. and is making his Broadway debut, says he got the idea for the drama while rehearsing another play in Stratford. "You could say the play cost me five pounds, the entrance fee to Hall's Croft, the cottage in Stratford where Susanna lived with her husband," he says. "It's around the corner from the theatre where we were rehearsing, and to get away for a bit I went over for a visit. The cottage is more about Dr. Hall, because he left behind the most remarkable casebook about what a doctor did on his rounds in 1613. So I wasn't thinking so much about Susanna until I read a book about the couple I bought in the bookshop. It said their life was very tranquil, but that there was one darker moment-when Susanna was defamed and accused of having an affair." He was having a cup of tea and thinking of the Hall's dilemma when an image came into his mind. "I knew they had to fight the case, or else his practice would have suffered badly," Whelan says. "I saw him deciding that if all three of them cover things up, as long as it can hold up in court they can settle their consciences afterward, with each other and with God. I could see John and Rafe and Susanna standing in a room. Hall doesn't want to tell them to cover up it up. He wants them to come to that conclusion without his having to ask them. And the strain and the stress and the agony of the situation is what propels the play. The moment you have people trying desperately to survive, and who can only survive by covering up their real feelings, the you have the explosive material of a play." Above: Armand Schultz (as Rafe Smith) and Laila Robins (as Susanna Hall) in The Herbal Bed CLUE #8-FOR PHOTO #8 ON PAGE 6: Lonette McKee delivered a ravishing version of "Bill" in this Kern and Hammerstein musical that also features "Ol' Man River." 52 WWW.PLAYBILL.COM PURE THEATRE ONLINE I'm Sitting Bull. Kiss me or I'll croak. Since 1898, Gund has been making loveable soft toys. You'll find the largest cast of our characters at FAO Schwarz, Fifth Avenue and 58th Street. Gotta Getta GUND. www.gund.com (C)1998 GUND Edison, NJ
