An Uneven Road

OLD JAPANESE proverb: There is more to drama than meets the eye. Unfortunately, neither George Hamlin, director of Narrow Road to the Deep North, the Loeb Drama Center's latest offering, nor playwright Edward Bond seem to be up on their old Japanese proverbs. Set, costumes, and lighting are all excellent in this production but they cannot camouflage the flaws of a weak script and uneven direction.

The play, written in 1968, is set in Japan, in the "17th, 18th or 19th centuries." Basho, the "great 17th century poet who brought the haiku verse form to perfection," journeys along the narrow road to the deep North in search of enlightenment. After thirty years he finds it and returns home, only to find the South ruled by the outlaw Shogo, who has murdered the old emperor and named himself head of the city.

Basho persuades Shogo's prime minister to go back with him to the deep North and enlist the aide of the "barbarians" in defeating Shogo and freeing the city. The barbarians turn out to be a British Commodore whose favorite saying is "ignorance is bliss," and his sister Georgina, a tambourine-waving soul saver. They all return to the South and a series of battles between Shogo's armies and the soldiers of the Commodore follow, with first one then the other side victorious, until finally Shogo is defeated and killed.

During the course of the play we learn that the difference between the outlaw and the British imperialists is one of means rather than end--what the one accomplishes through atrocity and terror the other gains through morality and guilt. As Georgina explains to Basho:

I persuade people--in their hearts--that they are sin, and that they have evil thoughts and that they're greedy and violent and destructive, and--more than anything else--that their bodies must be hidden and that sex is nasty and corrupting and must be kept secret. When they believe all that they do as they're told. They don't judge you--they feel guilty themselves and accept that you have the right to judge them.

Bond's point, though, is that tyrants become the victims of their own philosophies. "People who raise ghosts become haunted," he has Basho say, none too subtly. By the end of Narrow Road, Shogo is a dismembered corpse and Georgina is locked in the madness of her own sexual fantasies.

The basic problem with the play is that Bond never goes beyond the first and most obvious stage in developing his idea. So many characters are introduced in a relatively short time that we can glean only hints about their motivations. One of the most interesting characters, the young priest Kiro, who, in his search for enlightenment, is rebuffed by Basho and turns to Shogo, is also one of the least articulate characters and the reasons for his suicide are only partly explained.

Nor is the play's credibility helped by lines like, "Of course, that's only a symbol but we need symbols to protect us from ourselves. A fool destroys men but a fanatic destroys their hope."

Hamlin's directing suffers from a lack of consistency and authority. The first half of the play is spent introducing the characters and establishing the situation. Scenes follow in quick succession without every building on one another, either in mood or characterization. The second half works much better as the mood darkens and intensifies and a dramatic rhythm is established and builds toward the climax.

When Hamlin is working with only two or three actors he is able to create striking tableaus and make the best use of Peter Agoos's elegantly simple set and Will Durfee's evocative lighting. But he seems unsure of how to cope with larger groups, and scenes that involve crowds or depend on a lot of motion become confused and frenetic.

The quality of the acting varies from the high level of Rebecca Goldman's taut portrayal of the schizophrenic Georgina and Ed Baran's glassy-eyed baby-talking Commodore to the awkward self-consciousness of some of the bit players. Demetrious Athens plays a detached and rather pedantic Basho and Rick Hagan, as Kiro, and Thomas Nolan, as Shogo, both have a lot of stage presence but their speaking voices lack variety of intonation.

Narrow Road to the Deep North shares the failings of many of the Loeb's productions. Once again, the imagination and expertise evidenced in the acting and direction fail to equal the high level of the production's technical artistry.