PLAYGOER

Turning from "light summer fare," The Cambridge Summer Theatre has in "Anna Christie" its most successful show of the season. Acted by a uniformly competent cast, the O'Neili play of the Sea, despite the fact that a woman in a bar-room is not the sensation it was twenty-five years ago, is still good theatre.

The simple story of a Swedish coal-barge captain, his daughter and an Irish stoker, and the situation arising from her admission that she has been a prostitute, is not the supreme literary expression of man's conflict with the elements or the great American social document. The characters have a tendency to become types and the primary meaning of the play is often confused. The actors, although expertly directed in the mechanics of the play, have therefore concentrated on conforming to stock theatre types rather than on subtle and original characterizations.

Claire Luce handles her role well, despite the fact that makeup and costume are too typical of the average theatregoer's idea of a prostitute. She also has a tendency to waste emotion on less important scenes, leaving little intensity for the climax. Much freshness and enthusiasm and an authentic Irish broque are contributed by Richard Hart, who looks like a young and relatively innocent Errol Flynn. GEM.