The Playgoer

A good deal of talk about abortion, illegitimacy, and autibiosis flowed back and forth across the stage of the Wilbur last night, most of it complimentary. Ex-campus hero Joe Bannion (Lloyd Bridges) and his radio-executive wife Kate (Kay Stewart) spent the better part of three acts belaboring each other for deciding not to have a baby; they settled their aimless and inexplicable quarrels by leaving their high-playing jobs to settle in Rochester where Joe could toy with chemicals and tuberculosis at the Mayo Clinic for $1800 a year.

A problem play in the Scribe tradition, Arthur Laurents' "Heartsong" has neither a biting social problem nor a pat formula to rescue it from a morass of meaningless talk and contrived situations. Susan Douglas, as Ivy, the eternal sex force, is Mr. Laurent's champion of illegitimacy. Although she was the only character who seemed to have something relevant to say, Miss Douglas was as uncomfortable in her part as everyone else last night.

Realizing, perhaps, that his theme wasn't quite capable of sustaining "Heartsong" through an entire evening, Mr. Laurents was wise enough to write in a part for Shirley Booth, a competent comedienne from Hartford. When she was permitted to stick to her element, Miss Booth, who can make almost any line seem funny, managed to carry the play. But when she was obliged to join in with the rest of the cast in thrashing out the problems of marriage, Miss Booth sank to the same level of purpose-lessness that here colleagues and the author had established.