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  [[italics]]  [[bold]]   WHAT'S SO GOOD 
                           ABOUT "GOOD"     

   Just one of the many assets of this Royal Shakespeare 
    production is Alan Howard's brilliant performance   [[/bold]]

London, June 1982: The houselights dim. We see a raked stage. An upright piano is in the center. And five musicians in dark suits――holding saxophone, trumpet, violin and banjo――set up their stands. We hear German music of the early '30s. Actor Alan Howard enters and meanders. He is slightly disheveled, a bespectacled,
forty-ish Professor Halder of Frankfurt garbed in drooping tweed trousers held up by green suspenders. 
     Nine additional actors fill the stage and a few sing sporadically. We are told it is the year 1933. And the bewildered Professor begins a gripping monologue on the discordancies in himself, his work, and his relationships with his mother, his wife, his girlfriend, and his confidant, a Jewish analyst. Throughout we hear the quintet framing the action, playing inside Halder's mind.
     The Professor means to be good, we are reminded over the next two hours, as he sinks deeply and irrevocably into the seductive morass of Nazism. [[/italics]]
     The play is C.P. Taylor's [[italics]] Good, [[/italics]] opening at the Booth Theatre in New York on October 13th and performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in their first American appearance since the multi-award winner [[italics]] Nicholas Nickleby. [[/italics]] For his conception of the drama's central character, Howard has won Best Actor in the Standard (London) Drama Awards and Best Performance By An Actor in the London Theatre Critics Award, adding new acclaim to a long list of honors. The overall production has been hailed by the London press as a theatrical masterpiece and the RSC, as it is called, deemed by many to be the greatest acting company in the world.
     "What's important about [[italics]] Good [[/italics]] is that it's both anti-liberal and anti-humanist," said the 52-year-old Scottish playwright prior to the play's successful London opening in September 1981. "All of us, deep down inside ourselves, say 'I care about such things as unemployment... but not enough for it to make much difference.' That's Halder. That's [[italics]] Good. [[/italics]] And that's the bloody tragedy."
      "There's a great deal of Taylor in Halder," says 
45-year-old Howard of his friend who was to die a mere three months after the opening of the play. "Taylor was fascinated by the issue of banality. He asks how much do we believe, do we really believe, and says people can find themselves believing in things which ultimately turn out to be evil. 
     "Taylor was a witty, ironic and gently wicked man," he continues, "very gypsy-Jewish looking with black, wildish hair and extraordinary twinkle. He was very beautiful; he reminded me of a satyr. And he had the uncanny ability to constantly point out the staggering fragility in us all."
     Coming to terms with the human condition is a powerful Shakespearean theme and Howard reflects on similarities. "One sees perpetual things in both playwrights,"
                by Leslie Rubinstein
[[page number in bottom left corner]] 6
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