No Ayes For 'Ear' and 'Eye'

Both of Peter Shaffer's new one-act comedies, The Private Ear and The Public Eye, are failures in spite of generally good performances and the direction of Peter Wood. The Private Ear fails because it is a blatantly uninteresting and unfunny play. The Public Eye fails, though less completely, because it bungles its chance to exploit an amusing situation and a potentially fascinating trio of characters.

The Private Ear deals with three young members of London's lower middle class, and the story it tells is far from new. Ted, modern and ambitious, and Bob, anachronistic and romantic, spend an evening with Doreen, a silly little stenographer. Bob's dreamy, "sensitive" chatter only confuses Doreen, and naturally she prefers Ted. Finally, she leaves. That's all: boy meets girl, boy loses girl. Everything except boy gets girl, which, presumably is the message of the play: Naive romantics never get what they pine for. Shaffer's plot is senile and his satire is unsubtle and too familiar for an American audience.

The Public Eye fails too, but only partially. Certainly it is a better play than its companion peace. Its basic idea is a clever one: a wildly unorthodox detective, hired by an accountant to shadow his wife, has a wordless love affair with her instead. Julian, the zoot-suited, irreverent private eye, finally rescues the accountant's marriage and returns to his life as a "public" eye, minding other people's business.

Unfortunately, The Public Eye's dialogue does not match the novelty of its situation. Long speeches often seem unnatural and out of character, and the repartee flows smoothly but in sipidly. Still, the play might have been salvaged by a better actor than Barry Foster in the crucial role of Julian. Foster moves unsurely, his face fixed in a permanent mischievous grin. A really good pantomimist could have made this part both funnier and more convincing.

Except for Foster in The Public Eye, the acting is uniformly good. Geraldine McEwan (Doreen and the accountant's wife) helps both plays during slow moments with her sense of timing and expressive face. The fault is not with the actors or director; there is simply not a great deal they can do to improve the disastrous Private Ear and the abortive Public Eye.