And People All Around

George Sklar was a playwright of the 1930's; more correctly, George Sklar is a playwright of the 1930's, the only problem being that his latest work seems to have been aged for three decades. Topically And People All Around is as recent as the Summer 1964 civil rights murder. Dramatically it is as old as Clifford Odets, the Federal Theatre Project, and the flood.

Sklar wrote his last play in 1946 and swore he'd never write another. But, says the program, he found the subject so provocative ("it simply demanded this form") that he set to work dramatizing the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner.

Actually his play deals with the dilemma of a Southern white moderate who has witnessed the murders and goes into a Hamlet-like state of indecision about whether or not to tell anyone. Don Tindall, Sklar's Hamlet, is in love with Jean Portugal, a COFO girl from the North. With this premise And People All Around cannot avoid being yet another treatment of the predicament of the uncommited white man. Not that everything has already been said on this matter, but coming from such an obviously committed individual as Mr. Sklar, his play seems to have an excessively moderate outlook, as a result of which it fails to investigate any new angles to the question.

And People All Around is written in an old-fashioned protest-play form that seems utterly void of impact in the 1960's. Moments bear a striking resemblance to Waiting for Lefty. The play as a whole comes most definitely from a genre that pervaded the Odets era; Sklar's earlier titles, in fact, include works like Peace on Earth (1933), Stevedore (1934), and Life and Death of an American (1939), the final production of the Federal Theatre Project. Even the title And People All Around is revealing of the author's toward the "serious theatre" he sees this country lacking.

Some elements in Sklar's play transcend the form. His composite town of Leucadia presents a number of convincing Southern characters including a chilling deputy sheriff (perfectly portrayed by Roger W. Loomis) and a hopelessly lost, despicable belle (also well acted, by Susan Bertram).

The COFO people come off as stereotypes of the Northern civil rights worker. (For some reason, incidentally, Sklar uses real organizations like COFO, but substitutes for the KKK or White Citizens' Council a group called the "Redeemers.")

And People All Around is the American Playwrights Theatre selection for 1966-67 which means that it will receive dozens of productions at universities across the country before opening in New York. The Tufts Summer Theatre rendering is visually--even atmospherically--a fine one. Sklar's play seems ideally suited to the arena theatre, and director Marston Balch obviously knows how to block a 360-degree production; he has been doing it for years.

The acting, however, is erratic. Neither Ronald Hunter, as Don Tindall, nor Marilyn Meyers, as Jean Portugal, succeeds in conveying the fear and excitement of the situation. Some members of the cast simply don't look old, enough for their roles.

And People All Around is an energetic, thoughtful effort, both on the part of its author and of the Tufts company. But it is a case of misapplication: the serious-theatre void of the 1960's will not adequately be filled by the defunct self-consciousness of the 1930's.