In Need of Surgery

THE DUDLEY-HILLEL PRODUCTION of Neil Simon's The Good Doctor provides a warmly nostalgic evening--it brings back memories of junior high-school drama. How bad is it? So bad that it probably shouldn't be reviewed, at least not by anyone who is willing to tell the truth. But even at its worst, this production is not too innocent to offend anyone. Most of the actors look too frightened or unsure, and although there is a director, you'd never know it from the blocking or pace of the show. As in most junior high productions, whenever someone chances to display a little comic flair or intelligence--even unrefined--the effect is so exhilarating that it goes beyond moments of style in slick, even productions, and you might think that the person in question will do good things someday--in a college production, perhaps.

Opening night could have been a dress rehearsal, so it might be unfair to base these judgments on it. Shortly before the play began, the director called out instructions over my head to a stage-manager, concerning when to lower the lights, cue the actors, that sort of thing. There were less than 20 people in the audience, and the most vociferous of them departed after hooting and cheering for the sexton with a toothache, Jeff Woolf (who seemed so pleased with his performance and his fans that he could barely keep a straight face). Throughout the evening, people drifted in and out of the Lehman Hall cafeteria. Three girls taking tickets in the hall chattered and giggled for a while after the show started, although they reduced their volume slightly when someone stormed out and shushed them. Towards the end of the evening a janitor strolled in, seemed puzzled at first, and then remained in the doorway watching the show. On stage curtains slipped, and stagehands walking behind the set stopped to watch in full view of the audience. There were no large gaffes, although one girl sang the entire first verse of a song in a different key than the music that accompanied her. That kind of evening.

The Good Doctor itself, a dramatization of several short stories by Anton Chekhov, is no great shakes. These tales are early Chekhov, written under the name Antosha Chekhonte for sale to various humor magazines. They are merely anecdotes, where character is subordinate to the twist ending (which Chekhov was to chop off in his later, masterful works), deriving their charm from the compassionate tone, the airy, economical descriptions, and the flashes of pain in between chuckles. Neil Simon shatters Chekhov's mood, replacing it only with his shrill Broadway yocks, heavy-handedness, and sentimentality; moreover, the inherent Semitism of his phrasing transforms the peasants of Moscow and St. Petersburg into citizens of Anatevka. On Broadway, the superb cast of polished goyem almost made you forget Simon; the Hillel actors make you forget Chekhov.

LAWTON COOPER'S blocking is not much to speak of--in fact, it is unspeakable. Most of the time the actors say their lines while rooted in a single spot. Although they occasionally shift from one foot to the other. To see any visual style or interesting patterns of movement, you will have to look sideways through the open doors of Lehman Cafeteria to the bustling passers-by in Harvard Yard. The Good Doctor works best when the action is continuous, but in an amateur production a director might have to choose between two evils: black-outs after each scene, or, to preserve continuity, scene-changes in full view of the audience (while action occurs on a different part of the stage). Cooper, unaccountably, opts for both. A unit set would have helped; the set here is composed of bare, sloppily-painted flats and plain, unattractive pieces of furniture which nonetheless require a lot of time to move around.

For background music, the producers rented a tape from Samuel French of the Peter Link score for the original production (although it is not credited in the program), and what was modest and tuneful from a handful of peasant-outfitted musicians on Broadway here sounds like corny, department-store Muzak. The costumes, surprisingly, are the most professional element of the show; clearly, a lot of money has been spent on them. Some, like The Seducer's white tails, cane, and hat, are noticeably dazzling; others are trim and colorful, with a surprising amount of attention paid to detail.

The acting appears genuinely untouched by directorial hands. Certainly Cooper must never have heard of "pace," as it is indiscriminate throughout, with most scenes (such as "The Sneeze") unbearably slow and mis-timed. When a scene crackles and takes off, it is usually the result of a good performance; Jeff Harper, for example, who performs three startingly different roles with dash, bravura, and intelligence, is largely responsible for bringing off "The Drowned Man," an amusing episode about a sailor who'll drown himself for 60 kopecks. Jacques Semmelman plays a decent, if uninspired, Chekhov (the narrator), but in this contest his straightforward warmth practically saves the show. There are fleeting good moments from Stewart Chrition and Barbara Bejoian in "The Seduction" episode; Chrition, especially, with his macho-male-deodorant-commercial voice, would have been very impressive had the pace of the scene been less lethargic. Marina Grossi is exuberant and lovely in a piece about a young girl auditioning for Chekhov, until her sluggish reading of "The Three Sisters" conveys absolutely no comprehension of the play.

I don't enjoy picking on this production--really. But I'm told that directing slots are hard to come by, and I wonder how a show this ill-conceived could have been produced. Or how it could have been presented in this form, without at least calling in a specialist for extensive consultation and major surgery. What this production needs is a good doctor.