The Theatregoer La Turista

At the Loeb, until February 21

THE THEATRE Company of Boston seemed almost moribund last year, when a development project took away its home at the Back Bay Theatre and increased debts threatened to swamp it. The Company is back, however and stronger than ever, if its latest production is an indication. Harold Pinter's Landscape and Silence, and Sam Shepard's La Turista make up the most interesting evening of theatre at the Loeb so far this season.

Silence is a brutal play, the story of a woman and her relationships with two men, each of whom appeals to her in a different way. Pinter leaves questions unanswered. Silence is not as explicitly violent as some of his longer works, but it still allows the audience to wonder about the time factor in the deterioration of the girl's relationship, and about what the motivation is behind it all. His characters have only one dominant characteristic apiece, and are never quite full people. Yet the play achieves, in its twenty five-minute span, a distinctly Pinter effect. Larry Bryggman as Bates, the older of the two, creates an authentic character, a reserved man who just doesn't understand. William Young as Rumsey, the more flamboyant, has a tendency to swallow syllables in his brogue, but is convincing nonetheless. Roberta Collinge as Ellen handles her role well, running the gamut from ingenue to bitch as the relationships break down.

Landscape also achieves the Pinter effect: here an old married couple carry on a conversation on two completely different planes, he prating endlessly about his rather boring day at the pub, and the park, and the pond, and she luxuriating in the remembrance of a love affair. Pinter's language is brilliant, and sometimes broad. (When she finishes a private recollection of sex on the beach the day before, while he carries on about the weather, he asks "What did you think of that downfall yester-

day?") But in the end, the mask is stripped away, and he reveals his own doubts about her fidelity. The transition from dumb old chump to jealous husband is disconcerting in its suddenness, but otherwise effective. Larry Bryggman is good as Duff, the husband, and Josephine Lane is out-standing as his wife Beth.

SAM SHEPARD is one of the brightest people in contemporary theatre, with credits ranging from La Mama to Zabriskie Point. In La Turista, he has written a vehicle which succeeds on the level of farce, yet never seems at home on any other level. The play breaks cleanly at the acts, although each act mirrors the other to some extent in setting and characters. The first act can be taken as an entertainment, a humorous diversion of no great moment, but it seems to attempt something more. Shephard gives us two American tourists in a Mexican hotel, confronted with a strange Mexican shoeshine boy who invades their room, rips out their phone, and gives them (and the audience) a brief exegesis of Mayan culture. As the American husband lies dying of dysentery before an absurdly funny witch doctor, the boy assumes his bed, his clothes, his role, and finally, his wife.

The second act gives us the same couple, this time in an American hotel, this time confronted with sleeping sickness and a crazy southern doctor, whose son turns out to be Jan Egleson, the Mexican maniac of the earlier act. The doctor attempts, not to cure his patient, but rather to turn him into a Frankenstein character, playing on the patient's own death wish. The patient runs into the audience, and when cornered by the doctor's son and his own wife, escapes by swinging from the top of the theatre on a rope, crashing through the scenery, and bringing the play to a close.

La Turista is not the average Woody Allen tourist comedy. It is always engrossing, but also enigmatic, for Shepard never defines his people. Who is mad? Is it the doctor, or is it the patient? Who is sane? The wife, the witch doctor, the Mexican-cum-American-cum-southern black slave narrator? The viewer is just not sure, nor can he be, given Shepard's own lack of clarity. In any case, the acting is top rate, with Jan Egleson excelling in his ability to switch accents and characters in a moment, and Roberta Collinge marvelous as the wife. See it, if only to make sure it's real.