Pantechnicon; Sherman Yellen Rex

And I'm not one of life's greatest ironies the fact that Henry you believe that only a man could rule England was to be the father of the greatest regent in English history. Elizabeth how does a man who can't really understand the gifts and talents of women dealing with a talented daughter and a son who can't really take over the business. Sherman Yellen is the writer responsible for the pilot and first three episodes of the current television series called The Adams Chronicles. Sherman Yellen is also the writer for the Broadway musical about Henry the Eighth called Rex which is currently running in Boston tonight on Pan technique on a nightly magazine of entertainment the arts and ideas made possible in part through a grant from the courier corporation of Lowell Massachusetts. I now understand. And I'm Frank Morris. Coming up a bit later on tonight's edition of panic tactic and commentator Louis Lyons will be along with some thoughts on two important court decisions that took place earlier this week. That's all coming up on tonight's Penn Technica show me Alan has recently received a Tony Award nomination for one of his Broadway libretto is titled The Rothschilds.

And this year was also awarded by the Moscow Film Festival. The prize for the best script of Great Expectations has worked for the theater includes the Victorian parody delicious indignities the sketch and OK al-Qaida which was praised by the reviewers in New York and in London in the near future his new version of the classic fairy tale Beauty And The Beast will be produced by the Children's Television Workshop. Mr. yon is a native New Yorker and a graduate of the High School of Music and Art Bard College and Columbia University. After graduation he received a foundation grant which took him to London where he completed a year long study of Tudor and Elizabeth in literature at the British Museum providing him with much of the background material used in Rexx. I don't know if you can do a straight play about the monster Henry V I think monsters are an interesting sideshow events and nobody wants to spend more than five minutes looking at them. You have to look at the man and try to find what human in him it is much that was human and he was a man who started life with enormous gifts. He was a composer. He was right he was a poet

a sportsman. He did everything marvelously. He was a theologian. He was a gifted human being handsome a tennis player jouster and a great golden prince in the Renaissance and how they became the Henry the Eighth. And we all know and loath the tyrant the tyrant is an interesting story. And is this then what Rex is all about which is you know you're not him during the Renaissance period. I start with him as a relatively young man at the famous event in which you met Francis of France called the field of cloth of gold the last great tournament of the medieval age the very end of the medieval and it's a moment when you still see Henry as the wrestler as the athlete meeting on Berlin with a touch of the French Quarter. But that's not what about Rex is about it isn't about spectacle. It's about Strangely enough the limitations which men impose upon their own vision of life and Henry more than anything else wanted to be a diner he wanted to have a

dynasty which followed his father had been the first Tudor king and he had been determined not to be the last one and he wanted a son in the first act of Rex's about the quest for a son in the first three wives Catherine of Aragon of Canada provide him with one and Berlin would provide him with Elizabeth. And finally Jane Seymour who does give him the sun and who dies the second that is about the three children of Henry married the daughter of Catherine Elizabeth and Edward the son and one of life's greatest ironies the fact that Henry who believe that only a man could rule England was to be the father of the greatest regent in English history. Elizabeth. And how does a man who can't really understand the gifts and talents of women you know with a talent a daughter and a son who can't really take over the business like you only used just as the first three didn't go all the way through. No because I've always felt the other edge of the thing I read done that. You've got

to get rid of them as quickly as fast as you go down quicker than Henry did. Why get rid of the intermission. I just don't bother with them. What powers you have. Do you find that writing a musical is more restrictive for your writing talents really because you do have to blend in so carefully with what the music is all about and I would think that in writing a musical. Also you have to always keep the tone very light and detaining and doesn't this restrict you. Also there are some restrictions in involved and yes you can't go as far into the hideous The grotesque. We had a sequence in which I was actually beheaded and it was too strong for a musical. There are things and also the characters have to dance and have to sing and it means that you have to deal with the extroverted aspects of personality. You can't get into certain issues. Certainly the break with the church cannot be a big musical number. No I wouldn't think so.

But I don't buy it as a as a book scene it is in this particular collaboration has been more respect for the book writer than is usual and I've been allowed to do much more in the way of dramatizing whole events which may not be used as musical numbers from time to time. I would think with Henry being so complex and his involvement in English history and his role with the church how do you know when to when to start an action and when to finish it. Well that's what I'm hearing but as a writer for his ickle really well I try to find those actions which lend themselves to music and to dance to find those settings such as the field of cloth of gold or a party a Christmas party and Hampton Court Palace in which a great dramatic event can occur and you know it's like in the second act. It is a fantastic country. Confrontation between Elizabeth and her father have been terrific quarrel but it's still set against the setting of a party which we've seen Maurice dances fire dances sword dances and

amazing events taking place. It sounds like quite a lot of spectacle love do you have a small cast of thousands on the stage. No we don't. And one of the things we're doing is getting rid of a lot of the spectacle because we feel it in a way it's her it hurts us as a play and we're refocusing upon the people. This is an area which we're doing normal work with Rex so that we're aware as we started out and we had this incredibly lavish spectacle. Including scenery also. Yes a lot of us saying right we've been cutting back on that because the people tend to get lost in that kind of thing. We're interested in the people and we hope the audiences because the story about people about family life essentially because this is Henry's family why do you call it rocks. Rex is the Latin for the king. He signed his name Henry Rex even in his love letters to Anne Boleyn. He saw himself in rags. Did someone approach you about writing the book for this or did you have the idea and then you. Well the entre producer the idea originated with its producer Richard Hadlee who was a composer and he approached Richard Rodgers Richard Rogers like the notion

of the approach Sheldon Harnick cumulative and I had a book writer was asked around and when asked about it I had some doubts. I was troubled by the character of Henry whether one could really celebrate Henry the Eighth when there was anything in it which could be a party because I think musicals at that best have a sense of celebration. Yes oh yes. And I was interested in Elizabeth and I was more tempted to want to do a musical about her than about Henry because that's a character who is developing and changing and shifting and becoming a great woman whereas the Kings is the story of deterioration but suddenly the notion. Well I became interested in the idea that these two characters together could make up one play that as Henry is deteriorating. Elizabeth is rising. And it was a marvelous balance between the two acts in the UK. Yes well and when you create something like this show how much do you get involved in the manner of dress I realize that the customer does this but how much are you concerned

with making sure that some of the the day to day in the new show which which makes up the character is included in the play. Well my interest more than in costume is in language and style and jests. I use the material of the period. Rex is very bawdy offends some people I know that. But it's there is the body of the period. It's very much the kind of humor that I found in the joke books of that period of just books which incidentally Shakespeare used in his comedies some real life. Yes they were because they were current during the Elizabeth an era and rather crude jests and people just wrote jokes they wrote jokes is that you're like Joe Miller's just books years later and a lot of the scatological I want is actual humor and that was the nature of the today it was not a delicate age. And where do you find these did you do a lot of research and know it when I see him for example. Well I had done I years ago had I had done research in British Museum and another project completely. But in this case I found some of these books in libraries. I studied them. I didn't use these

drugs verbatim but I tried to find the style. It was fortunate because the age of the tutor it was the driving age in terms of language isn't the gold and I was a beacon of Shakespeare. So it allows for more liberty. It's a rather crude term. And in a sense I would have been loathe to have tried to reproduce Shakespearean speeches and then when you think of of just the tenuous balance really in the end musical as to entertainment wit but yet you want to get the story across did you find that difficult in terms of maintaining balance. Well it's compressing the time great events are occurring. He goes through God knows how many years in the first act and that has to be compressed and it is a difficult thing getting it to be realistic to have people accept the changes and shifts in character which are sometimes rather sudden. But those ships also exist in Henry's personality was there one moment where a clock tick yes no yes but he was also also the kind of man who could

love you at one moment and turn against you and say off of your head right and the next moment and you have to make that consistently understandable to an audience. When you work with that when you work in a musical for musical does the composer create his work first and then the book follows that. How do you work out this partnership arrangement in in this particular case and the other musical under the Rothschilds. I wrote the book first and wrote it as a play and then sat down and tried to adapt it to a musical with the advice and consent of my composer lyricist director but I don't know how you do it otherwise. It has to have the structure of play. I knew that years ago there were musicals done with a record collection of songs would be strung together with funny lines but that isn't what Rex is about and I don't think that would be a trick with sophisticated audiences are going to accept it. It sounds as if there is a great deal of language in the play.

There is still the spoken dialogue rather than a lot of saying there are many scenes in the play and there's a great deal of singing and many beautiful ballads. Richard Rogers writes about the most beautiful ballads ever. Yes and some of the existing wrecks. This hasn't been made into a record yet not yet but will it be do you think it will as soon as the score is completely set. Because we are here in Boston and we're changing seats and we are changing songs and this is part of the process of doing this out of town. Try I've often wondered how writers and playwrights can rewrite a scene so quickly when you think how often a play can change just from just within a 24 hour period the enormous pressure that you must be under if you realize the scene doesn't work to completely change it. Yeah to me it's mind boggling I maybe use it a lot easier when you're involved in the crowds and it's mine but it's not you. I never thought of the graph. What do you do it. And you look back in retrospect after the show as I did I do that overnight. I mean that's not to be believed and it's a tribute to the human spirit

which it's also a tribute to terror the fact that if you're easily embarrassed if a scene isn't working on stage and you just hate having to go back into that audience and look at it again and you damn well write it as quickly as you can guess you're just a credit is on the line. Yes it is. And the musical is it's like an avalanche it's very difficult and you're fixing it while all this thing is carrying on this amazing production is going on. It's an extraordinary experience. Did you have to do a lot of research for the Rothschilds. Yes I did I did. There was a fascinating family. Yes and it's again it's a story of another dynasty another kind of dynasty but a more positive one sense. Isn't it interesting how you've been involved in dynasties you understand were involved in the pilot project for the Adams Chronicles I did the first three scripts of the atom's Chronicles Well yes I'm interested in family life and the tensions and the love and aspirations of families. Do you think of the complexity of the Adams family. How did you decide on what to focus on what the highlights were and what direction you wanted this to go.

Well I only did the first three. But in those three I was interested in the development of John Adams character interested in integrity of the subject. I think when I was first approached by NE to New York the public broadcasting there was at the time of the Watergate break in and the ones I had never had a tremendous interest in the past of this country. I guess like most people growing up American history was relatively boring for me I kept thinking of all these guys all those dates you have you know I was dating all those people in bag wigs and all those battles you couldn't Lexington and Concord never know which one came first. And it was still done through. And it was a little reluctant but then I started reading the letters of John Adams and came upon a man with extraordinary integrity was in such sharp contrast to what we were dealing with at that time that it was just said. I said to myself I want to know more about these people. I want to where we come from and how we've gotten to this point. And looking at John Adams and looking at Richard Nixon. What we have

we regress do you feel in some ways yes I think the quality of leadership in this country have deteriorated considerably. I think there was a respect for education that existed in the time of John Adams no longer. There is a contempt for it in this country today. What do you mean in respect of education. Well a man like John Adams had a passion for learning and the area of ignorance in his life was something that unsettled he really born. Yes. And so most of the founding fathers were relatively well-educated men men who knew most of the important facts of the world of their time more difficult to be well educated mentally than it was in the 18th century. However there was no contempt for it for learning as it does exist. You really do feel there's a contempt for her I think if we look at the kind of men who run this country today and their educations and their view of the intellectual as opposed to what Adams view or Jefferson's view of intellectuals would have been quite different. And that's why we're in such trouble today.

I suppose also one problem is that there is so much information coming at us from all angles and information of a new nature all the time just because of the speed of living in a communications world. Yes but. Intelligent and well educated men are trained to make judgments. And if you don't have these men running your country they can't make the proper judgments. It is impossible and always seems to be an extraordinary thing. We were advised that certain men are good even though they are rather dumb. You can't be good and you know it to be a virtuous man. You must some degree be able to make certain distinctions which only come from having intellect. What is your next work going to be on my next. Well I'm doing a film after Rex a Beauty And The Beast which is a fairy tale and taken from a new point of view from an adult point of view one adult point of view yes because I'm dealing with the sexuality of a young girl as opposed to if you remember the Cocteau film that was full of a kind of surrealistic beauty.

I'm not that interested in that style and I'm more concerned with the story of a young girl and how the beast becomes a kind of analogy for sexual feelings all very subtly done. Mind you who is the beast the beast is George Scott George Scott. Yes. Did you have anything to do with the casting. No I don't but I think it's an excellent choice. We've been listening to Sherman Yelland writer of the Richard Rogers musical Rex currently on stage at Boston Shuba theater prior to its Broadway run. Coming up next on tonight's edition of fan technic on WGBH commentator Louie Lyons is here with some thoughts on two important court decisions which were handed down earlier in the week. A Massachusetts Supreme Court decision involving veterans preference in employment and the U.S. Supreme Court decision on homosexuality based on a case from the state of Virginia. And now here's Louis Lyons.

Two court decisions this week have struck at two strains of perversion one in public eye one private that have waited a long time for such purgative action. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court killed a veteran's preference that is monopolized public service jobs and demoralize civil service in this state for more than 50 years. United States Supreme Court ruled that a state may keep its law against homosexual acts. There's checkmates a decade of increasing acceptance of homosexuality under the banner of gay or alternative lifestyle. But put down by the court on the sodomy. The Massachusetts court struck down the veteran's preference act as discrimination against women but one justice observed that all non-veteran men are equally discriminated against. Another Justice said there's a difference between giving veterans credit as in the United States civil service law and giving them complete entitlement to the most desirable jobs as

a justice Toros said eligible veterans regardless of qualifications relative to non-veterans have the public employment field cleared for them on an absolute and permanent basis. By making the veterans status a prerequisite The state has set a criterion having no demonstrable relation to the individual's fitness for civilian public service. Well this has been said one way and another a thousand times since the fearsome lobby of the American Legion fashioned a monopoly of civil service for veterans but a demand for the issue of discrimination against women to knock it off. It was a case of Mrs Helen B Fannie Drake who finished an examination for administrative assistant in the mental health department but one of the 11 veterans report ahead of she was 14. The veterans needed only a passing Mach to go ahead of any non veteran. Ironically the veterans lobby had a recent chance to accept some legislative moderation of their

absolute monopoly but they rejected it and the arrogance of knowing politicians would lack the courage to stand against them. This is Finis case removes a blight that has afflicted the public service in this state over half a century. Civil service positions have never had a chance at the most competent unless by chance the highest mark happened to go to a veteran. The chance of this has been so slim that when a key position required special ability a special act exempting that job has had to be passed. They heard did you have veterans preferences rooted in the cynical attitude toward public service or the particularly reactionary philosophy of the brand the Republicans in control of the state house at the end of the First World War. They had only contempt for public service feeding at the public trough. It was their expression to let veterans have its monopoly it was a cheap way of getting the veterans vote cheaper even than letting them go on welfare.

Efficiency in public employment meant nothing to them. No the quality of public service. By the time the second world war brought another lot of veterans the American Legion had battened on the absolute preference and resisted every move for reform. The result has been to give civil service itself a bad name and to cost the Massachusetts Taxpayers and the institutions of the state the penalty of less than the most competent service available. The United States Supreme Court decision does not mention homosexuals. It merely stamps its approval without comment on a lower court decision. That uphill the law of agenda against unnatural and lascivious acts the constitutionality of that law had been challenged by a pair of homosexuals acting in a law on with a national campaign supported by the American Civil Liberties Union that has brought repeal of such laws in 13 states.

Seldom has a judgment so quietly rendered set off such consternation dismay and anger from libertarians as this checkmate of the so-called permissiveness that has characterized the past decade and a half in this era championing the homosexual has been a favorite theme of the sociological journalist a frequent vehicle for the scented sophistication of the women columnist in the living section of the daily newspaper. To demonstrate their emancipation part of the pattern that sees the movie critic proving his defiance of censorship by playing up the X-rated movie with detailed recital of its perversions and the book reviewer unveiling the indecencies of the latest work of pornography commercial pressures from the entertainment business largely account for this M&M and what were recently counted those wise restraints that make men free.

The particular case of the homosexual gained acceptance and then asked to be fairly acclaimed even exulted in those who have held to conventional standards of taste and expression are squares. Most squares couldn't care less about the actions of homosexuals if they didn't flaunt it and demand attention and even applause to what they claim is protected by privacy. Not quite apropos is a short letter to The New York Times Monday responding to the journalistic flap over the reported domestic rift in the British royal family. That's a clever Bryn Mawr writes whole people like me are always complaining about their pet are they with which the world is changing. It was therefore reassuring to see the make up of the front page this morning and to realise that what really interests people is a marital squabble in a royal family just as it did in the days of many of us and Helen Well the day she speaks up was March 20.

One wonders what the journalistic orgy over the new gossip book of Nixon's final days in the White House would suggest to Hamlet Macbeth. The book describes Henry Kissinger as companion of Nixon during some of the abnormal behavior ascribed to next. I guess never been a victim of the primaries the president renouncing his detente policy. Senator Mansfield denouncing his warnings about Rhodesia but the secretary of state demonstrates talent as a book review here issued a statement about this book saying that excerpt from the book he has seen contain too much gossip too many inaccuracies distortions and misrepresentations to be dealt with. You know Ed. The secretary believes those excerpts show an indecent lack of compassion and lack of human understanding on the part of the authors. One broadcaster

has used the term psycho journalism. Some 40 years ago Cristobal Molly appealed to publishers against the oozing sensationalism of his time. A little dignity gentleman for God's sake a little dignity. He would need to change only one word today. A little decency. Man's Congressman protest a Pentagon announcement that it plans to buy 30 million dollars worth of machine guns from Belgian for army tanks. This say the members a man is taking business away from the management corporation in Soco Maine. That makes such guns and was indeed a competitor for the aura that went to Belgium. The Pentagon says the 30 millions purchase will make it easier for the Belgians to fulfill their last July contract to buy a billion dollars worth of fighter planes from this country. Also under consideration is an American purchase of four billions worth of a West German tank. A leopard in competition with

American manufactured tanks. The Belgian machine gun cost twice as much as its main competitor but according to them it has shown on test more reliability and operational effectiveness and is superior overall although the main gun is claimed to last longer. These Belgian and possible German purchases are described as a first step in the verse defying American arms purchases so that trade in weapons will be a two way street with our NATO partners. One might speculate what effect this abandonment of the Buy American policy may have on Congress voting on the Pentagon budget. Will Scoop Jackson go all out in support of Moore and back up my things if he doesn't know whether the business is going to Boeing or Belgium. Tomorrow is April Fools Day. Am I right. No matter where various segments of the world falling apart war and the

threat of war churning in the Middle East and Southern Africa the European Common Market members have scheduled an election for a European Parliament April 1. If it sounds impossibly visionary it is at least positive in the direction of pulling things together. This will be remembered it was held in absolute necessity at the end of World War Two and was the concept of the best minds and leading statesmen of Europe. That concept has fallen father away now again in economic and political crisis. They all question arises in Europe can they unite WGBH commentator Louis Lyons who returned on the Friday Pentagon with our regular feature review of the week's news. Thank you for being with us tonight. Join us every weeknight at 6:30 and weekends at 5:30 p.m. tomorrow evening. COX discusses the Supreme Court and

Watergate for this evening on pantechnicon. This is Hellenistic and I'm Frank Fitzmaurice. Thank you kind of heard your on GBH radio seven nights a week and the program is made possible in part by a grant from the courier corporation of Lowell Massachusetts.