Three in the Theater
Three who have made it in the theater—an established actor, a rising star, and a brilliant young play-wright—began their careers on Dart- mouth stages. These Dartmouth success stories belong to John Cunningham '54, David Birney '61, and Robert Montgomery '68, respectively. All three are working in the New York theater, and showing up on the drama pages of metropolitan newspapers with some regularity.
The plays and musicals in which actor John Cunningham has appeared reads like a list of the best of the decade. Fresh out of Yale Drama School and in his first New York audition, he was selected by the late Moss Hart to understudy the Henry Higgins role in My Fair Lady. Since then he has played in the New York production of Fantastics, Hotspot (a Judy Holliday musical), Cabaret, and Zorba.
He has a solid background of training in repertory, performing for three seasons in the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Conn., where he played Brutus, Prince Hal, Mercutio, Orsino, Edmund, and most notably, Petruchio. This portrayal induced one New York critic to comment, "John Cunningham's Petruchio cracks like the bullwhip he snaps at his wilful wife."
Versatility is one of Cunningham's virtues as he moves from musical to drama with ease. He has played most of the major summer stock theaters, equally as adept in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as in Teahouse of the August Moon.
John's acting career was set in his Dartmouth days when he won best acting honors in Saroyan's Hello Out There, the 1954 Chi Phi production which won the Interfraternity Play Competition. He grew up in New Paltz, N. Y., and came to Dartmouth with no particular career in mind, but with a keen interest in music. The Glee Club and The Players kept him performing and set his future.
He served part of his two-year army hitch with the Seventh Army theater company in Germany, and then went to Yale Drama School for a Master of Fine Arts in Directing. In the starring role in Yale's 1958 musical version of Cyrano, the biggest production in their history, he distinguished himself singing through a putty nose. John played the lead in Company, which won the 1970 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as "best musical," and has also been active in daytime drama on television.
When he was a senior at Dartmouth, David Birney climaxed an outstanding collegiate dramatic career with a portrayal of Hamlet which one local drama enthusiast remembers as the best she had ever seen. Last summer Birney played the role again in a Bloomsburg State College production and modestly noted that this performance was "less self-consciously serious." In the intervening years, he has played everything from Shakespearean repertory to TV "soaps," learning about his craft from both.
He is currently receiving high praise from the critics for his performances in Lincoln Center Repertory Theater productions, particularly as the romantic Irish youth in Synge's classic, ThePlayboy of the Western World. Birney was first noticed by the critics two years ago when he had the lead in another off-Broadway play, Summertree. He won both the Clarence Derwent and Theater World awards for his portrayal of a young man (every young man) who goes off to fight and be killed in Vietnam in a war he can neither believe in nor rebel against. His performance was described as sensitive, appealing, tender, and lyrical
The awards led to the leading role as Mark Elliot in a television daytime drama, Love is a Many SptendoredThing, which brought him "fabulous" money and fan recognition. But producers and playwrights casting their stage productions do not tend to watch daytime TV, so he turned back to repertory theater.
Attracted to the theater first by the literature, and then by roles in Dartmouth Players' productions of HayFever, The Boy Friend, Guys and Dolls,The Skin of Our Teeth, Look Back inAnger, and Hamlet, David was undecided about making a career of it. He considered business, law school and even teaching in East Africa, but finally went to UCLA on scholarship for a Master's in Theater Arts, turning back a fellowship at Stanford Law School to do so.
During the army service that followed, he received the first Actors' Equity Award from the Barter Theatre, Virginia's state theater, then went on to the Hartford Stage Company, and thence to New York. Like many other American actors, Birney admires the English opportunities for solid training in the classics. With his impressive list of credits and honors, however, one could scarcely consider him unprepared, and the future looks more than bright.
Robert Montgomery '68, whose first efforts at playwriting won plaudits from Dartmouth judges in the 1967.Fr05t Play Contest, has won the highest possible accolades from New York Times drama critic Clive Barnes for his Subject to Fits which was presented last month at the New York Shakespeare Festival's Public Theatre. Jerry Tallmer '42, drama critic of the New York Post, was another who gave high praise to Montgomery's play.
In a lengthy review of unadulterated praise, Barnes calls the play "a joy to encounter ... a cerebral play of dazzling intellectuality, manic wit and calm literacy ... a play to cherish." Subject to Fits is described by Montgomery as a response to Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot. In the play, which is not an adaptation of the novel, but rather a fantasy emerging from it, Montgomery uses Dostoyevsky's characters to present a fresh understanding of madness and an honest view of the outsider in society. In doing so, he provides an illumination of Dostoyevsky himself.
As a freshman at Dartmouth, Bob received a citation in English which noted his remarkably intelligent and Perceptive essays, especially one study of Faulkner's techniques in Light in August which was "something of a critical discovery." The directing of this acute mind towards the theater began that year when Bob became a member of The Dartmouth Players. He was Prince Dauntless in the Winter Carnival production of Once Upon a Mattress, acted in several other plays, and then in 1967 turned to writing with Play-Play, selected for performance in the Interfraternity Play Contest.
Shortly after he graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, Bob married Nancy Lee Sheridan of New Jersey and then went on to Yale Drama School. Although the ink is barely dry on his Master's degree, this talented young playwright has dazzled seasoned New York critics and there is keen anticipation of what he will do next.
John W. Cunningham '54
David E. Birney '61
Robert S. Montgomery '68
