The Playgoer

Amateurism, the inevitable companion of amateur theater, finally caught up with Harvard dramatics last night. After a winter season unparalleled in recent years for artistic and financial success, the local thespians--HDC wing--have taken one more step into what must have looked like the blue heaven of prosperity. If the opening performance of their prosperity vehicle is any criterion, however, they are about to rub their eyes and find the stardust quite, quite gone.

"June and the Paycock" takes a lot more in the way of acting and direction than a quick reading of Sean O'Casey's masterpiece might indicate, a lot more than the Dramatic Club has been able to give it. With almost no exceptions, for example, the east last night failed to achieve even the minimum requirements of a brogue. Actors crossed awkwardly in front of each other, faced the audience for no apparent reason other than a sheer desire to do so.

Most of the burden for these and other short-comings in the staging lies apparently at the feet of director Andrew McCullough, an experienced technician who must have been below his best for the current production. One piece of staging in particular was painful: the hiding at the back of the set of the frighteningly pathetic scene in which June comforts her son Johnny after he sees the ghost of the man he has betrayed.

The chief failure of the play, however, was in the individual performances. The general run achieved a wooden mediocrity which broke the back of any attempt to maintain the professional illusion which has characterized recent HDC and other local efforts. Others were more objectionable: Walter Frank completely misplayed Joxer, making him a large and boisterous knave instead of the small, whining rogue he is; and Robert Lubchansky was oily to an unpleasant extreme as Bentham.

As the billed stars of the production, Helen McCloskey and Ted Allegretti were expected to--and did--carry the weight. Mrs. McCloskey started out with such speed that she swallowed many of her lines; as she developed the part of Juno she caught some of the almost cruel indomitability with which she holds her rotting family together. She never approached, though, the real intensity which the role offers, her famous closing speech in particular falling below standard in what was evidently an attempt to avoid repetition of style.

Allegretti, too, got some and only some of his part. He played it for humor--and he got just that. Credit must not be denied Allegretti for the laughs at which he aimed: he got them, acting, indeed, with more skill than anyone else in the cast if also with more mugging and audience-facing. But his comedy was of an almost slapstick variety at times, never fulfilling its tragic implications for his family and his country, his style ranging as far as bombast toward the middle of the last act and mawkishness toward the close.