The Compromise

In a brilliant shift of its dialectic, the Poet's Theatre has sided with comprehensibility this month, and come up with a rousing, if not always consistent, spoof of early and silent Hollywood. Much of poet John Ashbery's original play is quite funny.

The risk Ashbery ran in conceiving The Compromise was that he would not be able to sustain with his dialogue a potentially tiresome theme: recollection of the ridiculous over-acting and aphorisms of the first silent movies. Despite a few lapses in the second act, he maintains the necessary easy facetiousness which gives him a chance fully to explore the ludicrous proportions of each melodramatic character. When he falters, it is generally when the action needs spiking with a few irrelevant laughs, which he gets by contemporary cynical asides to the audience. They rather destroy the continuing tone of the play, and therefore probably weaken more than strengthen. The best humor is milked from his straight and well-cooked dialogue, which director Edward Thommen exploits to the limit.

The Compromise, which is set in "The Canadian North Woods," presents a Jackie Gleason-type Mountie accused of thievery, kidnapping, and bad faith by the lecherous villain who has designs on the Mountie's wife. Hopelessly involved in a tangle of impossible circumstances, the Mountie goes away for five years in his attempt to clear up the wrong-doing. Fickle womanhood weakens, the wife marries the villain, and also "gives half her heart" to the Mountie's best friend. He returns, and in a delightful departure from established custom, the air is cleared only by the intrusion of the puzzled playwright. His characterization as the willowy, frustrated aesthete provides welcome relief from the tiring melodramatic heros and heroines, and is the most penetrating in the play.

Edward Chamberlain, the "victimized" Mountie, probably saw Bert Lahr in the movie version of Rose Marie. His Irish accent isn't specially consistent, but he has all the sweeping charm and confidence of the Northwest hero. Janice Thresher, as his ever-dithering wife, does well to play her role completely valiantly, because it is important that she never lapse into obvious contempt for what she is trying to spoof. Joe Hudak's leers, in characterizing the villain, have an ambiguity which cleverly both underscore the mock melodrama and cynically comment on it. His violence and forcefulness have a very convincing feigned ugliness. The part of the author, played by Hugh Amory, is honest, and therefore very incisive and highly amusing. Unfortunately for George Montgomery, an Indian brave, his lines apparently call for modern comment on the ludicrous action, thus making him the play's weakening link. A chorus of various boy and girl Indians intone explanation and prediction of future action, in case anyone in the audience hadn't guessed for himself. Costumes and lighting as usual are modest because of the players' skimpy budget, but they in no way detract from a generally very entertaining show.