The Theatregoer Troilus and Cressida at the Loeb Drama Center thru Oct. 22

Since the opening of a splendid new theatre is a festive occasion, the following remarks about the performance will look like a death's head at a feast.

Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," which officially opened the Loeb Drama Center on Saturday evening, is a long, ambiguous, dispirited play that professionals can hardly cope with. It is, I suspect, outside the range of amateurs. Although they can and do go through the motions of telling a story with considerable competence, they cannot endow it with a point of view. Nor can they become classical actors by working hard and willing it.

They are performing in a beautiful professional theatre. Every Harvard man who remembers the mean circumstances in which Professor G.P. Baker had to emigrate from Harvard thirty-five years ago will be elated by the taste, virtuosity, and solid character of the Loeb Theatre. In his time, Professor Baker could not have imagined such a plant. Any professional or university institution would be proud to have at its disposal a theatre that is so inviting, comfortable and versatile, and that has such perfect acoustics and sightless.

It has one virtue that is intangible but creative. As soon as the house lights go down, it can be forgotten as a separate entity. When the decisive moment comes, everything in the theatre is at the disposal of the actors. Thanks to the bountiful generosity of John L.Locb and the professional enterprise of Hugh A. Stubbins and George C. Izenour, Harvard has acquired a theatre that it can use, enjoy and be proud of...

In the Shakespearean canon, "Troilus and Cressida" comes after "Hamlet" and the powerful tragedies and at a time of the moody, enigmatic comedies that are unresolved and express a general distaste for life. There was a time when pedants were convinced that Shakespeare had suffered a nervous breakdown. Romanticists are sure that the Dark Lady of the Sonners had betrayed him more wantonly than usual, and that, like Jimmy Durante, he was in a mowing mood...