Charlie and Funnyhouse of a Negro

When the couple with the seats in the middle finally arrive at 8:40, everyone else in the row must file out to the aisle to seat them; the Hotel Bostonian Theatre is so small that even the mice are humpbacked. In its limiting surroundings the set design and blocking of these two plays is a technical achievement. But, more important, David Wheeler's direction and the uniformly good acting make both plays effective.

A sharp, funny one-act play, written by Slawomir Mrozek and translated from Polish, Charlie deals with three characters and one problem. The characters are an oculist of rather flexible moral convictions (Paul Benedict), an old man with a loaded gun and bad vision (Edward Finnegan), and his solicitous, direct grandson (Richard Shepard). These last two are country people, and they see the problem as a simple one: Grandpa wishes to kill something named "Charlie"; he needs some glasses to recognize him. The doctor has difficulty understanding, though.

As lone representative of middle-class moralism, the doctor takes a series of questionable positions on this problem. Mr. Shepard and Mr. Finnegan neatly present their doggedly simple, suspicious characters they provide the perfect backdrop for Mr. Benedict's gorgeous moral acrobatics.

In contrast to the astringent clarity of Charlie is Adrienne Kennedy's murky nightmare, Funnyhouse of Negro, Mrs. Kennedy, the program twice repeats, greatly admires Edward Albee; accordingly the stage is hung with cobwebs, and populated by disparate fragments of a demented Negro girl. From Robert Allen's set we immediately get the theme of black against white (even without the huge black ravens which the script suggests should fly about the set during the first scene). Without surprise, we learn that Sarah (Barbara Ann Teer) had a white mother and a black father, that she rejected her father and his blackness, and that her agonizings have cost her her sanity and her hair (which has fallen out in clumps). The intricacies of this identity crisis are represented by her four selves: Patrice Lumumba, Jesus, Queen Victoria Regina, and the Duchess of Hapsburg, Except for one cruel scene between Sarah and her lover Raymond--a Jewish poet "who is very interested in Negroes"--the play is composed entirely of motion and monologue. Miss Teer's performance is magnetic, and this form permits her to hold the audience completely at times; but it leaves other moments wearily empty.

Mrs. Kennedy manipulates symbols without saying anything new about her dead white intellectuals or the tormented Negro who cannot escape their values. She creates one character, at most. But she has provided a vehicle for atmosphere, and by skillful direction and acting the Theatre Company of Boston saturates she small theatre with it.