The Pelican

In his own quiet way, Tom Babe has spent the term making a contribution to Harvard drama that will not soon be equalled. His production of Wedekind's Spring's Awakening was the most ambitious and most successful on the Loeb mainstage this spring. Soon after, he proved himself an inventive comedian in the HDC's production of The Importance of Being Earnest. A month later his article on the Loeb appeared in the Spring issue of the Harvard Review, and on the same subject, he ably represented the forces of sanity at the panel discussion on drama held at Leverett House. Last weekend (and God knows where he and his cast found the time) Babe opened Strindberg's 1907 play The Pelican at the Loeb Experimental Theatre.

The Pelican is one of Strindberg's more harrowing achievements. Roughly, the story concerns the tragic changes in a family following the death of the father and the marriage of the daughter. The mother is in love with her newly acquired son-in-law, not realizing that he is interested only in the dead man's estate. These and other conflicts finally lead to a series of catastrophic confrontations in which the family, perhaps aided by the spirit of the dead father, turn against the mother and bring about the destruction of the entire household.

Although powerful and highly theatrical, the play has its problems. Strindberg was interested in dramatic conflict and theatrical tension, not in plot, and his plays have a loose form and pay little attention to careful characterization. Frequently he would resort to conventional melodrama. A modern audience finds it difficult to accept a plot device as blatant as that of the hidden letter in the chiffonier's secret compartment. But Strindberg doesn't care that his plot device was awkwardly introduced. Once he has introduced it, it becomes the quickest means to a desired end, and he can forget about it, concentrating on its dramatic effects on the characters. It is to Mr. Babe's credit that he realizes this and dispenses with the plot devices quickly and efficiently, underplaying the melodrama in the script.

Babe's Pelican, then, is both an excellent and a significant production, significant in that it comes close to being a perfect realization of one of the ideal uses of the Experimental Theatre. Taking full advantage of the surplus building supplies in the Loeb shop and the furniture in the prop rooms, The Pelican proves that a low-budget Ex show can look as professional on its own terms as a show on the mainstage.

Unlike most Ex directors who put props on the floor for a set and use the moveable black flats only to separate the playing area from whatever wing space is necessary, Babe and designer William Schroeder have built a small raised stage in the theatre, a rectangular room open to the audience on two sides. The Ex's seat-wagons are placed directly in front of the two open sides, so that the audience becomes in effect the two missing walls, and The Pelican thereby achieves intimacy and involves the audience. The conditions are close to ideal for Strindberg's "chamber play" (as in chamber music): the play was written for a theatre which seated 160, and the Ex seats about 120; the austere set even looks Swedish.

Whether intentional or not, Schroeder's set is subtly off-perspective, and the slight distortion in the walls and the floor reduces the depth of the set and makes it appear almost two dimensional. Since the set is small and the viewer's eye tends to see it as an entirety, Babe is able to use the 2-D effect and to stress perspective distortion in his blocking.

Controlled lighting also emphasizes distortions of depth and perspective: at one point when the mother crosses from the chaise-longue upstage ten feet to a chair, the shadow on her face never changes, and it looks not as if she has walked toward the audience but as if she has enlarged in proportion before our eyes. Babe moves the characters effortlessly in this fashion, almost as if he were editing a film on stage. Never allowing the confines of the set to interfere with his blocking, he doesn't hesitate to have a character circle a table the long or illogical way, if it gives needed visual emphasis to that character. In doing this, Babe gives The Pelican its own stage reality.

Vocally, the play builds in volume and intensity as it progresses. Babe has wisely chosen to have his actors underplay, forcing them to perform with self-discipline. The acting is amazing, considering that four of the five east-members are usually employed on the Harvard stage as comedians, and the fifth as a dancer. Emily Levine gives a spine-chilling performance as the mother, easily her best to date, and not once does she lapse into any of the mannerisms that have marked her last three performances. Susan Channing plays the daughter. Her sheer technical skill is amazing, and she manipulates the emotions of the audience with the slightest change of expression. Bea Paipert plays the Cook and effectively establishes the mood and tone of the production, on which the other characters have to build. If Joel Silverstein and Jim Shuman, as the son-in-law and son, lack the vocal technique to completely put over their most difficult scenes, they make up for it by turning in consistent performances which are frequently brilliant and effective. Silverstein moves powerfully, and flawlessly executes the stage business Babe has given him. Shuman's first outburst hits a superb blend of fear and repressed aggression.

But the faults don't really matter. Five actors carry off a performance of a play different from the kind they usually perform, and they carry it off superbly. I suspect that the conditions of this production have taught them a lot about their own acting, and this is not the least important function of student theatre. In producing The Pelican, Tom Babe enthralled his audience, fulfilled his responsibility to his cast, and effectively brought experimental workshop techniques back into the Loeb Experimental Theatre.