The Theater: Imperator Submersus

REX

Music by RICHARD RODGERS

Lyrics by SHELDON HARNICK

Book by SHERMAN YELLEN

To see this musical is like watching a marauding shark becalmed in a suburban swimming pool. As an actor, Nicol Williamson radiates a sense of imminent danger, mercurial passion and magnetic authority in such a way that he could be every inch the awesome monarch that Henry VIII was. But in Rex he is submerged in a book that swamps that masterful Tudor reign with research-soaked tedium.

The drift of Sherman Yellen's book is that Henry divorced or beheaded wives in quest of a male heir. Actually, there was a son,...

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