Changes

Mrs. Polinsky must be a very happy lady! Not only does she have two fine sons, Joel and Steve, but they are also actors, having a company of their own they call Theater Two and now a night of three one-act plays they call "Changes." Talented boys, Joel and Steve. Not only do the two of them play all the parts themselves, but they also act as their own artistic directors, adapt their material, stage it, you name it. What you might call a regular two de force.

Well, not that I want to break a mother's heart, but problem is it doesn't really work. The Polinsky brothers' two-man theater is really nothing more than a fancy gimmick. Real theatrical challenges are either not perceived or else simply ignored in an effort to arrive at a simple-minded kind of two-bit bravura.

Packed into the basement of the International Student Center on 33 Garden Street (where, due to the closeness of the quarters, one's dominant impression is of the backs of other people's heads), "Changes" harkens to the days when all the kids in the neighborhood would put on a talent show in the nextdoor garage, charging indulgent parents 25 cents admission to view the totally expectable proceedings. (No wonder that, now grown, the same kids have no use for the notion of a nationally subsidized theater.)

"Clowns" is the first act of the Polinskys' entertainment and, since it's written by Bertolt Brecht, it's also their one fling with a sure thing. Except that "Clowns" as adapted and performed by Theater Two is very minor Brecht indeed. Little more than a commercial of a parable in which it is demonstrated that even when acting under the banner of mutual aid men may actually be out to destroy each other. Case in point, a wooden dummy which the two clowns of the title systematically set about to dismantle. Since it's all over before it's really begun, one can hardly complain.

Next on the list, "Hawkins and Grabber," written by Joel and Steve themselves. Set in the Stars and Stripes Forever Bar and Grill, the skit pretends show us two old war buddies, reunited for some mutual drinking and consolation. The joke is that under all their boasting and one-upmanship (Hawkins is in oil, Grabber builds planes, Grabber has one Rolls Royce, Hawkins has two) there is only a couple of scared men threatened by a world of "commy pinko cruddy bums." The fact that that last line is meant to get a knowing laugh should give you some idea of the complacency of the piece. See how the other half runs and thank you Lord that I'm not numbered among such sinners.

Finally, in the best and the only bona fide play of the evening. "The Werewolf" by Sheldon Feldner, an assistant professor of drama at Emerson College, the Polinskys get around to a real exercise in theatrics. Steve is a rather tiresomely portrayed, holier than thou priest. Joel is an invading crazy, convinced that he's a werewolf and on the verge of committing suicide. After a long series of thrusts and counterthrusts (the play does have some difficulty finding itself), the werewolf bests the priest by demonstrating that secret sins don't disappear simply by being confessed. The only real difficulty with the piece is that Feldner seems afraid to take himself seriously (his them is after all an unfashionably moralistic proposition) and so, with every chance he gets, he pokes fun at the playlet's melodramatic fabric.

As for Steve and Joel Polinsky, you begin to wonder why, if they are seriously interested in this acting business, they don't join up with a real troupe of actors. Joel, especially, has a nice manic quality, making him a kind of elongated Eliot Gould. But "Changes" is just too riddled with meaningless pretention to challenge what talent is there. Take its subtitle for example--"An Original 'Circus-of-the-Mind' Tragi-Comedy in Three Episodes"--no actor should have to pretend to be performing in such a cerebral bigtop.

Unless of course, Joel and Steve are only out to bring the Royal Nonesuch to Cambridge. For how else do you read the self-proclaiming advertisements on the back of the program promising instruction in "exciting fall and winter drama programs featuring sense recall, blocking, animal and shower games?" And how do you take the rather timid striptease in "Hawkins and Grabber" as Steve and Joel remove (some of) their clothes in a metaphoric portrayal of psychic undress, if it's not just an attempt to provide the press agent (listed in the program as Off Beat Promotion) a saleable poster idea. No, I'm afraid for all their potential, unrealized talent, there's a good deal of the Kind and the Duke about Joel and Steve Polinsky and their attempt at Theater Two. But then how do you tell them that? And, worse, how do you tell their mother?