Tiger at the Gates

The curtain at Pi Eta opens on a starkly effective silhouette of Peter Prangnell's representation of the Trojan Gate of War, but Giradoux's Tiger at the Gates is not a play about Trojans or even about Giradoux's France and Germany: despite its setting it contains much drawing room comedy, while being concerned with the "stupidity of men and the elements." The HDC production manages to carry it all off with verve.

The whole historical crowd is there --from Priam all the way to the face that launched a thousand ships. But some of them you might not recognize right away. Giraudoux has chosen his Trojan locale with malice afore-thought. He seems to delight in slipping in anachronistic elements, such as references to the "middle class." Entering the spirit of the thing, director John Beck appears to have added a few of his own: one bare-chested sailor sports a tattoo reading "Mother" --but in Greek, of course.

Kathryn Humphreys as Helen also offers a few surprises. Her beauty is gamin rather than statuesque, and she plays Helen as if she had just stepped out of "Born Yesterday." Unfortunately, however, the lines do not always fit the Judy Holiday-dumb blonde stereotype. As a result the meaning of the lines is occasionally lost together with some of the story's coherence.

When a play centers around the impotence of giants and their helplessness at the hands of destiny and trivial accident, the presence of some few gaints onstage is essential. Lawrence Channing, as the Hector determined to avert the Trojan War, never manages to achieve heroic stature. In his initial appearance, returning victorious from a two-bit war, he bounds onstage like a ten-year-old running to mother and bestows on Andromache a puerile peck. He does sometimes, however, rise from his adolescent manner to the posture of a warrior. His oration to the dead on the closing of the Gate of War is most convincing.

Beck has handled the problems of directing a large cast in capable style. Though the movements of characters is at times arbitrary and artificial, these incidents are not distracting, and the general effect is exactly that case which is required.

The supporting roles are adequately handled and the humor is played to the utmost. As Andromache, Johanna Shaw overcomes a certain flatness of tone to portray the concerned and anxious wife of Hector. John Beck, doubling as the crafty Ulysses, presents a fine portrait of the experienced and uningenuous Greek ambassador. Christopher Rawson's portrayal of Paris as a complete sensualist involved an excessive number of effeminate hand-on-hip gestures.

A large number of old men are convincingly portrayed. Despite the difficulty of such roles for students, the actors manage to play the parts with the necessary cracked voices, without monotony, while establishing a separate identity for each.

Lighting and music are movingly integrated into the production. While some of Walter Benson's lighting effects show the self-consciousness inherent in college drama, they always manage to accent the general action. In a period play with a large cast costumes are necessarily a problem. In Tiger at the Gates, the costumes though well-styled always appear merely costumes, rather than attire.

The HDC has tackled a large and ambitious play and does it well. John Beck's direction has been carefully planned and successfully executed. Tiger at the Gates is an amusing, yet thought provoking, work and its present production highly enjoyable and rewarding.