Summer Playhouse Presents De Hartog's 'The Fourposter'

For its third offering of the season The Boston Summer Playhouse is presenting a pleasant, if not exceptional production of Jan de Hartog's The Fourposter. This amusing account of the hills and valleys of married life is really a delightful and tightly written little play. The plot covers thirty-five years of marriage, including the embarrassment of the wedding night, the birth of the first child, the problems with the teenage children, the "other woman," and finally the mellow maturity of middle age.

Agnes and Michael, the husband and wife of the piece, comprise the entire cast. Therefore, this is essentially an acting piece. As such it requires extremely accomplished character actors who can travel smoothly from their late twenties to their early sixties during a brief two hours. And being an intimate, homey piece, it is frequently performed by husband and wife teams, to catch the authentic flavor of married life.

Sylvia Daneel and Tad Danielewski are husband and wife in real life, but that is about where the adherence to precedent ends, I fear. They both have pronounced European accents, which might have added an interesting quality to the produce of a Dutch playwright. However, they make for some strange line readings and an improper inflection often kills a good laugh.

Miss Daneel is a very captivating woman, but she is frequently unconvincing as an actress. She is supposed to cry at several points, for example, but a drier eye was never seen. Moreover, she tends to squeal when she speaks, and she minces about excessively. Mr. Danielewski is the more successful of the pair. But it takes an extremely experienced artist to direct himself in a starring role, and even then the results usually leave much to be desired. His performance is too subdued, his staging indecisive and vague, and there is far too much stage business. He does not seem to have a total conception of the production; as a result, Michael and Agnes grow old not gracefully but spasmodically.

For some reason, the Boston Summer Playhouse has chosen a large percentage of highly sophisticated comedies for the season, but so far they have not given evidence that their actors have sufficient flair for high comedy to merit the choice. Humor certainly makes for "light summer fare," but somehow comedy without flair is more difficult to swallow than drama without guts.

Whoever rounded up the period costumes and props did a noble job tastefully and with great industry. But the long and intricate scene changes might be an indication that it is not such a good idea to do a heavy prop show in the round. Appropriate music might make the going a little less rough.

The Fourposter is really a lovely play, and though the Danielewskis do not play it for all it is worth, they do manage to capture a good part of its charm.