The Poets Theater

"This is it," says a young man in a pink union suit, as the curtain closes on the first of three play lets. But, luckily it isn't. Following Sid Gorman's The Center, which seems an obtuse animation of an Abner Dean cartoon the poets enact two less murky and much more enjoyable play lets. The best of these and perhaps the only real theater of the evening, is Richard Eberhardt's The Visionary Farms.

Eberhardt's drama is basically a caricature of the American businessman his culture ideals and cutthroat ethics. In his realistic portrait of America in the early part of the century Eberhardt is clear and eloquent.

He describes Hurricane Ransome a high powered businessman, who lectures to a Sunday School class one day and embezzles his firm of over a million dollars the next. The discovery of his felony is the signal for friend to turn against friend as each man tries to save his own financial skin.

This study of social America is however set within a cocktail party where a group of pedants are discussing life in terms of good and evil. As I see it Eberhardt's central plot is meant to illustrate that one can make no clear cut dichotomies of this sort. But this is by no means obvious and the author might have intended quite another interpretation.

Eberhardt composes his lines so that everyone but Ransome speaks in precise uncontracted English. While the effect is slightly strained, I think it adds to the general effect. Most of the performers handle the conversation well, but Robert Brooks, who has a part both in the cocktail party and the flashback speaks as though he were reciting a Shakespearean soliloquy. The other actors especially Neil Powell as Ransome manage to hold their balance, although there were a few muffs in Wednesday's performance. Excellent direction by Jewanne Tufts and Frank Cassidy make the most of the dramatic transitions.

The first play, The Center, suffers from contrived symbolism. Six people in pink union suits prance around the stage admiring an invisible object. These people, I presume can either represent a deluded mob believing in false gods or a group that has found true religion.

The hero of this play let is the individual or the skeptic who is outside the pale. He cannot see the object of beauty and failing to see refuses to believe in it. As he taunts the mob, it closes in on him; he falls into convulsions and dies. If your sympathies are with the mob his demise is a victory for the true faith. Otherwise it is a triumph of the group over individuality.

While the idea of The Center is a good one both the and conversation are. Gorman seems to have intended to rely on choreography as a substitute for speech; regrettably the performers do not have the dancing ability necessary.

The final piece as a sharp contrast to the symbolism of the first and the morality of the second is both superficial and amusing. This fantasy Smith: A Masque by Alison Lurie describes the dilemna of a young graduate who must choose a life's work. The graduate played by Tom Kennedy must select among Junno and wealth, Venus and artistic fame or Minerva and scholarship. Smith an obstinate fellow will have none of them and the goddesses immediately dispatch him to points unmentionable. Despite an overlong ending, the performance is thoroughly enjoyable.

This suggests perhaps that the Poets need not wrap themselves in musty cloaks of symbolism and obscure verbiage to place their audiences since Eberhardt's social drama and Miss Lurie's fantacy were both successful for the Poet's' Theater and entertaining for its spectators.