The Haunted House

The Tufts Arena Theater traditionally scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find its plays. The splinter it removed from under its fingernail this week is "Mostellaria" (or "The Haunted House") by Plautus. This farce dates from around 200 B.C. and, except for the fact that it predates almost all of them, is totally indistinguishable from the five thousand other farces based on the carousings of a wayward son during his father's absence. It has in it the familiar wily servant and the hordes of cooperative women and it ends in the inevitable crisis precipitated by the father's unexpected return. (Don't prodigal sons in farces ever know their father's itineraries?)

Any individuality that "Mostellaria" might have had in the original is effectively disguised by Frank Copley's translation. In skirting the dangers of the overly academic translations often made of Latin and Greek plays, Mr. Copley has veered too far to the other extreme. In a program note he says that, "As Plautus tried to make his Greeks talk like Romans, the present translator has tried to make Plautus talk like a contemporary American." The flaw in this reasoning is that while there were many points of similarity between the Greek and Roman civilizations, few of these points are mirrored in our time. In particular, since we do not live in a slave society, one of the main characters, a slave taking advantage of his masters absence, is undercut by the colloquiality. But more important than this is that it is jarring to hear a tunic clad actor say, "P.U., you stink!"

The same problem of style hampering translation is found in Lowell Swortzell's direction. It is conceivable that by a careful introduction of side-splittingly funny bits Mr. Copley's script might have been saved (though I doubt it). Instead Mr. Swortzell has contented himself with moving his actors awkwardly around the stage. When he does choose to introduce a bit he invariably works on the principle that if something is funny once it will be at least twice as funny the second time.

It is hard to assign final responsibility for the uniform ineptitude of the acting, but it seems likely that not all of the blame should be placed on the individual actors. Much of the responsibility is the property of Mr. Swortzell who, besides mismanaging his actors' movements has also failed utterly to provide any unity of style for his cast. In any case, the acting is so uniformly abysmal that no purpose would be served by naming names. The one aspect of the show that is worthy of praise is the fine set designed by Stephan Palestrant. He alone seems to have any idea of the style and lightness required for the staging of a dated farce. In fact, to paraphrase Wolcott Gibbs, Mr. Palestrant's sets were delightful, it's a shame that all those people kept walking in front of them.

"Our American Cousin" and "The Cave Dwellers"

The first two productions of the Tufts season were far superior to the present program. As its first production, Tufts staged an adaptation of "Our American Cousin", the play at which Lincoln was shot. Lowell Swortzell's adaptation has as one of its main character the watchman at the Ford Theater. This character serves as a narrator, describing the events that took place on the day that Lincoln was shot. Within this framework "Our American Cousin" was presented as a series of flashbacks to the performance and a rehearsal allegedly held earlier in the day. In the midst of this historical grab-bag, it seemed occasionally as though director Nancy Swortzell (Mr. Swortzell's wife) had lost sight of the play. This was unfortunate because although "Our American Cousin" was written as a melodrama, it achieved its fame as a burlesque of the melodrama form and for this type of show very carefully stylized and postured acting is required. Dana Bates and Seabury Quinn, Jr. managed the proper tone, but most of the rest of the company seemed ill at ease.

Last week Tufts presented William Saroyan's "The Cave Dwellers." One's reaction to Saroyan's self-consciously heart-warming parable is a matter of personal opinion. I find it a little on the gooey side, but as performed last week it was smooth and enjoyable. Margaret Victor was charming as the girl and Frederick Blais did a creditable job as the King. Stephen Palestrant produced servicable sets for both shows.

The ambiguity of Tuft's position is that while in all of its advertising and publicity it represents itself as a professional company, it is not. It is staffed almost entirely by college students, many of whom are taking summer drama courses. Yet it tries to produce a professional slate on a professional rehearsal schedule. It is not, unfortunately, quite that good.