Rated G

SURE AN OLD GOAT might think of carrying on an affair for thirty years with the same woman. But what if he's your father? Neil Simon gives his generation an outlet for its fantasies, sexual and otherwise. He also provides a blanket of security for the over-40 crowd by poking fun at its socially unacceptable desires. A mother might turn to her husband at the end of a play by Simon and say. "See, dear, that's why we haven't been swapping partners lately."

But what does Simon have to offer the younger generation? They don't want to know what makes them fear shedding their inhibitions. They just want to lose them. Sometimes Simon makes a young person laugh, but for the most part it's an empty kind of humor. His jokes don't work because the human toibles he satirizes have not been part of a lad's experience.

That's why Simon's latest work, originally titled The Curse of Kulyenchikov and soon to be renamed Fools, represents a total departure for the middle-aged playwright. In The Curse of Kulyenchikov, Simon finally tackles a universal problem. Indeed, the play focuses on what promises to be the greatest challenge of our time.

Simon doesn't come out and say he's talking about affirmative action, of course. Otherwise, he might lose the affection and patronage of most older people. They go to the theater not to hear about issues like court-ordered desegregation, but to escape as simply as possible. Simon thus has to clothe his lesson in his typical vehicle, the love story.

From the start, however, we know something is up--boy doesn't meet girl in Fresno. A teacher, instead, falls for a ravishing but ignorant peasant in a remote Russian village. The premise unfolds quickly. An unfortunate group of Soviet serfs living in a secluded part of the Ukraine has been smitten with a curse that renders them, and their descendents, totally dense. If anyone stays in Kulyenchikov for more than 24 hours, he, too, loses all intelligence. A long procession of teachers has attempted to break the chain by enlightening one student, but all have failed because of the curse's time limit.

The residents of Kulyenchikov are not just stupid. They're idiots. The fish vendor sells carnations as haddock and the doctor can't read his own eye chart. The star pupil, whom the newest teacher, Leon Tulchinsky must cure, just learned to sit down a few days ago. Sophia is 18 years old. This would be just another pointless Simon situation commedy--a collection of Amelia Bedelia jokes, as one viewer put it--if it weren't for the necessity of affirmative action.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION in the literal sense is clearly required to educate Sophia. It will take more than a passing effort for her ever to learn, for example, to count to three. No teacher has been willing to devote himself to the cause and risk catching the curse himself. The worst part is that the residents have become so frustrated by their incapacity to link thoughts coherently that they almost blame themselves for their ignorance.

Actually, their curse has been imposed from outside, but the peasants tend to forget it since the source is gone. Theirs is a common symptom. President Bok, and others in positions of power, have it. In his open letter on issues of race, Bok refused to justify special admittance policies "as a form of compensation for injustices visited upon racial groups especially during earlier periods in our history." Instead, Bok prefers "to rely on different, more forward-looking reasons to explain our policies."

The fact is that neither Blacks nor the residents of Kulyenchikov caused their own problems. It was society that imposed obstacles to education of American minorities, and society must now make up for lost time. The problem is that Leon and American institutions have been going about affirmative action for the wrong reasons.

At first, Leon chooses to try to help Sophia only because she's beautiful. He believes, correctly, that she will marry him if he succeeds. But if their relationship continues on the basis of self-interest, theirs would be an eventually fading romance. In the same way, if minority education is accelerated as a pacifier of social unrest, Americans will never possess the determination which is needed to cure their curse.

Leon, in fact, soon realizes that Sophia's physical attraction is not a sufficient motive to risk catching the curse himself. He becomes frustrated and decides to leave the village. Today, in comparison, we are on the verge of giving up our own affirmative action effort because of problems within the process.

The realization of his bonds to all the citizens in addition to his sexual attraction to Sophia finally leads Leon back to Kulyenchikov. Leon grows to love the residents as individuals. As long as he thinks the ignorant are freaks, he cannot begin to help them.

Leon fails, though, because the relationship between him and the residents is a two-way street. Until they also love Leon, his efforts disappear. Because of a lack of love for the majority, many in power today are able to argue against quota-based affirmative action. If institutions set a specific level of minority acceptance in their admissions policy, the reasoning goes, these students might feel stigmatized and separated from the others.

Quotas for admittance would, however, supply the fastest way of remedying society's past mistakes. Once remedying the evil of ignorance is recognized as a necessity, as Leon does, one must adopt the quickest way of achieving equality of educational opportunity for all. If the bond of love could replace self-interest, quotas and other affirmative action tools would pose no problems.

IN THE END, Sophia falls in love with Leon, thus supplying the connection that removes the 200 year-old curse, and allowing Simon fans to walk out of the theater happy. And the story doesn't finish there. When ignorance has been conquered, a new society evolves in Kulyenchikov with different problems. The innocent fish vendor becomes an insufferable capitalist, and Sophia is no longer willing to accept Leon's opinions at face value. But life is now fuller for everyone in Kulyenchikov. There can be no going back.