A Company of Wayward Saints

Last but not the least in the current flock of Harvard theatricals comes the North House's production of George Herman's A Company of Wayward Saints. The comedy is not great dramatic art, nor does it aspire to be. Shying away from the deliberately abstruse and intellectual, this North House company holds to the more modest yet honorable goal of pleasant entertainment. Its lack of pretense serves it well; the evening is filled with the uncontrolled laughter that such middle-level comedy dreams of achieving.

A two-act expansion of the play within a play device, Wayward Saints concerns a trouble-prone Commedia dell'arte troupe which tries to stop quarrelling long enough to earn passage money home. The players, who have blown their own opening curtain, introduce themselves and then proceed with their financial backer's nearly impossible assignment: an improvisation of "The History of Man." Their irreverent rendition of civilization, more 1066 and All That than Encyclopedia Britannica, bumps comically along, but the players keep breaking character to bicker with each other. In an explosion of petty grievances they disband, only to regroup for a second act. This time the company attempts Man's rites of passage, and as the actors become engrossed in their story, they mellow into cooperation and exit smiling.

The play's delight lies in the parodies, its unavoidable weakness in the occasional dips into ho-hum solemnity. Playwright George Herman's academician alter-ego elbows aside the comic dramatist, forcing a meaning which the humorist could carry less intrusively. Herman's over-seriousness trips us the cast as well. The two straight scenes suffer from awkward blocking and sags in tempo while the comic sections skip around similar problems. What's worse, the dialogue smothers itself under a dead weight of philosophizing. Fortunately, Herman's didactic compulsion interfere only infrequently, and the comedy is allowed to bounce ahead.

Acting a group of actors acting could be as messy as it sounds, but the cast's sense of the characters carriers well both in and out of the interior sequences. The actors have an easy relaxed sense of comedy that keeps the more obvious jokes from becoming slick. Especially funny are Sue Cole (Columbine, the Nag) playing a Dolly Levi style matchmaker with a touch of Mae West, and Steve Peterman (Scapino, the Acrobat) is a funky Snake in the Garden of Eden. Joe Gurman, as Harlequin, the Manager, is burdened with more than his fair share of heavyweight lines, although a lighter, more self-amused interpretation might have camoflauged some of the script's moralizing. Producer-director Paul Harrison has met limitations of budget and set with a work of exactly the right scope, and his crew has delivered on what promises the play holds.

Wayward Saints aims mostly for entertainment and then a bit beyond at a message. The play falls short of its more solemn ambition, but its comedy hits accurately for most of the evening. The show is good, not great, but a modest play well performed has its place in collegiate theater, and Wayward Saints is exactly that.