J.B.

Whoever said "a poem is never lovely as a tree" was talking through his hat. Archibald Mc-Leish's J.B., a poem for the stage, is a lot lovelier than most trees you're likely to run into. True, as rendered by the Lowell House Drama Society, it appears to have lost most of its leaves, and a couple of limbs seem ready for a fall, but the trunk is still there.

McLeish is something of a saint in the American theatre, and deservedly, so. In J.B., he makes his meaning clear and lilting for an audience with or without the biblical background. Job--J.B.--starts off rich and happy and before long finds himself poor, sickly, but ever faithful. For a moment he gets fed up with God and the whole system, but is finally coerced into selling his soul back to Heaven.

Putting on a serious, offtimes metaphysical work of this sort in a House dining room is no easy trick. It's not hard to design a ludicrous set for such a theatre--or such a play--and nearly impossible to design a workable one. But the Lowell House set, consisting of a couple of pseudo-pop-art posters flanking a Heaven platform and an Earth platform, is a gem.

The lighting, however, too often seemed non-existent. In fact, the only time everything could be seen clearly was when a passing pair of headlights flashed through the dining hall windows.

Stephen Nightingale, the director, has played each of J.B.'s conflicts for all it's worth, and his actors seem always aware of what's coming off. Their awareness, furthermore, goes a long way toward making the lines comprehensible to the audience. But there isn't enough of an organic quality to the production. James Thomason's devil trembles on every line William Sinkford's God is comparatively natural and unemotional. And while each of these performances might serve on its own, they shouldn't be part of the same production.

Several of the other portrayals--particularly Daniel Bronson's and Leland Sanderson's--were in-jokes understood only by a really small in-crowd.

What is most important in performing McLeish is the skill with which his verse is read. Nightingale has avoided the obvious pitfall of over-emphasizing what there is of rhyme and meter. And if he nonetheless falls into a couple of others, they are decidedly secondary.

Anyway, the play has got what it takes; and the production, despite its failings, comes over on sheer poetry value alone.