Broken Promises

There's an old rule in politics: don't make promises you can't keep. Last week, President Bunting reneged on a promise to 250 Cliffies and proved once again that she's a particularly inept politician.

She went before an RGA meeting ostensibly to explain the College's precarious financial position (it faces a $130,000 deficit this year), but ended up by denying that she had ever promised off-campus students $65 a year subsidies to pay for their own breakfasts.

Students, she said vaguely, had "misinterpreted" what she had agreed to at a heated meeting with their representatives last Spring. Yet everyone else involved in those negotiations has perfectly indelible memories of the terms of their agreement.

According to Cliffies, the College proposed the break-fast subsidy plan after students complained about higher room and board rates. The new rules required off-campus students, even those living several blocks from the Quad, to contract for three meals a day, instead of the one they had been taking.

Cliffies argued--and with good reason--that it was inconvenient to make a long trek each morning to the Quad; if they had to do that, they said, the richer off-campus residents would simply buy their own breakfast food and the less well off would refuse to move off campus. The College--already in a housing bind even without this threat of insurrection--quickly offered break-fast subsidies.

But this September, the College Comptroller said he had never heard of the plan; Mrs. Bunting, after assuring reporters on September 26 that the deal was on, made her surprising announcement last week.

One can sympathize to a degree with the College's position; after all, Radcliffe's operation has always been a shoestring one at best and the budget is likely to show greater deficits in the future, what with wages and up-keep on the rise. Radcliffe really can't afford to subsidize anyone's breakfast.

Yet Mrs. Bunting certainly ought to have foreseen the deficit last Spring, before girls contracted for rooms off-campus with her blithe assurance that they would eat their breakfasts where they lived. Now many girls never eat the dorm breakfasts they have paid for and are, in addition, shelling out money--more than $65--for their own supplies.

The blame must fall on Mrs. Bunting. By breaking a promise with one-quarter of Radcliffe's population and ignoring the possible hardship she has caused them, she has acted irresponsibly and perhaps dishonestly.

But this story pleasantly loses itself in the fireworks of the staging. Kaplan seems embarassed by his play and hides it underneath slick, intriguing extra baggage. A trio of dancers introduce the play and revive it every so often with some beautiful props--portable striped walls and peacock plume pens. Howard Cutler's set--a thatched Roman comedy setup--is thoroughly used by Kaplan. Unlike most Loeb sets it is reassuringly substantial and handsome.

The acting is completely gimmicky, but with fast and clever gimmicks. Chumley has mastered an idiot grin, and cartwheels admirably across the stage. Miss Bush and her counterpart Dame Chat (Joan Tolentino) scream too much, but their grimaces and multicolor petticoats (Lewis Smith's costuming is superb) more than compensate. In smaller parts, David Dunton as a myopic curate is the only actor to read, rather than chant his lines, and his care pays off in laughs. Ed Jay, Jr., as a sleepy Linus-figure with a patchwork blanket, is trapped in his one sight gag, but is pleasant enough.

Deitch grossly misplays Diccon, the one role which might have substance, assumedly with Kaplan's approval or instructions. Diccon is a Bedlam, a lunatic released from the asylum to beg about the country, like Poor Tom in King Lear. Deitch plays him as a controlled crafty-plotter--a fuzzy combination of Puck and an American confidence-man. His dress and manner is stylized motley rather than lunatic tatters. His elegant flourishing makes him swallow the many good jokes he has, and completely twist his character.

The Loeb production is a collection of musical, humorous and choreographical moments with little integrity. It dazzles the eye, but sounds (except for the spirited musical interludes) like the parody of Shakespeare's low comedy in Beyond the Fringe. Masters Puke and Snot, rather than a Master of Art is in charge.

The play needs to be manhandled. But on the other hand, if it can't be produced as an authentic, academic staging (which would be disastrous), there's little reason to do it at all. Gammer Gurton's Needle is not even a vehicle for Kaplan's production, it is an excuse. Don't see the play, but do see the production and dream about the marvelous things that might happen if this company got its hands on a real bawdy Elizabethan farce.