Soap Operas Harvard Square

Monday through Friday at 8 a. m. and 9 p. m., WBUR-FM

ON THE WALL of a bathroom in the Coop, someone has written "STRETCHING NEURONS, LEON"; the producers of Harvard Square were pleased to find out about it. It just goes to show that people have been following WBUR's "continuing drama" radio program closely enough to pick up on the catch-phrase ("stretching neurons!") of one of the show's characters (a drug culture sensualist named Leon). If people write about you on bathroom walls, you know you've made it.

On Monday, the thirty-episode series re-commenced with episode number one. Today, you can tune in to the third episode in this series of fifteen-minute glimpses into the lives of Leon, B. N. C. Mitchell, a nice-guy student filmmaker, Steve, a condescending Harvard student, the proprietor of the Citizen Kane Dry Cleaners (whose name is Charlie Kane), two laundry workers named Manny Washington I and II, and into the life of BU student Scott Langer, around whom all these characters (and many more) revolve.

It took about thirty actors, some of them reading more than one part, to fill all the roles in Harvard Square, and it's only by means of a meandering plot-line that all the characters are connected in one way or another. The construction of the plot, in fact, invites comparison with The Edge of Night or Secret Storm, but the subjects treated in the series have more range than the endless marriage/adultery/abortion/divorce variations of the more conventional soap operas.

In the first four episodes, hero Scott takes girl-friend Emily to see Citizen Kane. discusses the film with her and his love-life with friends B. N. C. and Harvard culture-cultist Steve, takes his suit to the dry cleaners in preparation for a date at the Museum of Fine Arts with Emily, and meets authoritarian proprietor Kane and dissatisfied employee Manny Washington I, who takes Steve's suit to wear for an employment interview and who gets the job as a part of an exhibit at the Museum, but who loses the suit to playwright Francine and actor Bradford, who get it back to the cleaner in time for Scott to wear it on his date with Emily, Got that? In a clever climax (around episode four) they all end up at the Museum of Fine Arts, where each muses over the exhibits and applies his particularly aesthetic standards to them. Kane, for instance, rhapsodizes to his daughter, "This is it, Mary Anne, the hub of the hub of the "universe. Culture! The reason you're here is to let some of the culture rub off on you. Culture has to do with responsibility..." Many Anne doesn't reply, but as they wander through the Museum, she keeps repeating in awe to herself, "Dynamite! Dy-na-mite!"

THE WHOLE series, in fact, is punctuated with various characters' observations on art, philosophy, polities, and social problems, which distinguishes it very rapidly from most "golden age" radio entertainments and from their serialized TV descendants.

What distinguishes Harvard Square even more is the way in which the old radio shows' linear style of plot development has been transformed into a fragmented form where the current vignette being enacted is interrupted by flashbacks to examine what has gone before, and where a single word in the dialogue can trigger the introduction of a set of man-in-the-street interviews on the subject in question. Besides having the form of an experiential montage held together by the relationships between characters, Harvard Square uses separation of recorded voices, sound effects, and background noises on eight tracks to add depth. (When WBUR switches over to FM stereo in the next few weeks, a new dimension will be added to the sound by means of a kind of microphone "panning" from one speaker to the other.) Harvard Square requires careful listening for an understanding of what's going on around, behind, and in the story-line. And for some of the episodes, what's going on isn't really worth the careful listening-the surreal qualities of the show's construction become less than real, or just dull.

The trademark of the series is a voice saying, "Y'know, I never knew my life was like a radio program until I came to Harvard Square." While it's not very nice to pattern your life after a radio program, it's a fascinating experience to listen to a radio program pattern itself after your life.