Dead Babies, Geraldo and New Orleans

Harvard theater comes in a few familiar flavors. There's the ambitious production of a classic, like the Mainstage "Three Sisters" of 1995 and (presumably) the forthcoming "Coriolanus"; the hip contemporary play, like last year's "Fat Men in Skirts" or 1994's "Six Degrees of Separation"; and the musical, which can range from a low-budget house affair to Sondheim overdoses of "A Little Night Music" and "Company."

And then there's the humble pocket production, the play created by a few extremely devoted students, often with a single person acting as the driving force behind its conception and execution. Such labors of love are occasionally bright stars in the local firmament--one thinks of Winsome Brown '95 as Oscar Wilde--but more often they remain rather stolidly on the ground, more remarkable for their intentions than for their results.

This was the case at the Adams Pool last weekend, where writer, director and star Neil Farnsworth '98 staged his play "Rust." Many in the audience commented that they could remember reading the play in draft form over two years ago, and there's no question that Farnsworth mush have moved heaven and earth--or at least the OFA--to get his work from the page to the stage. But the play itself had no more to recommend it than most freshman efforts; and the cast, for whatever reason, didn't add much to its appeal.

The plot of "Rust" is a blend of familiar elements, invoking by turns Albee, Williams and others. Brad (played by Farnsworth, disguised unsubtly on the program as "Ichabod Crane"), a schlumpy former grad student, is stuck in his childhood home in New Orleans because his selfish siblings refuse to help him take care of their ailing mother. Scott (Jason Chaffin), the older brother, is a smug, cold yuppie; Jane (Sarah Yellen), the sister, is a cruel harpy masquerading as a p.c. environmentalist. Poor old Mom, played by the usually effervescent Shar von Boskirk, has nothing to do but sit center-stage for the duration of the play, gurgling and babbling unconvincingly. Those who saw her in last year's West Side Story might have yearned for a chorus of America, but in vain; at least one can say that she pitches a nice epileptic fit.

The play kicks off with Brad addressing what seems to be an empty crib, declaring his plans to leave home with his new girlfriend in a last bid for independence. Immediately, the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf alarm begins to sound: Is there a dead baby behind this family's dysfunction? Naturally, there is--though this fact isn't fully revealed until the play's climax, it's obvious right from the beginning, and it makes for a pretty flimsy plot device, not to mention a derivative one.

It's quickly established that Brad's siblings are staggeringly mean, given to berating him in tandem with statements like: "If we put mamma in a home, she'll die, you know. And it'll be all your fault." But other than this single, salient feature, none of the characters are clearly drawn. We know that Scott's a jerk because he's a Christian minister, which in this context is shorthand for hypocritical bastard. He's also deserving of ridicule because he refuses to have premarital sex with his dishy girlfriend Candice (India Landigran), even though, oddly, he seems to live in sin with her. Just to be even-handed, we know that Jane's a jerk because she berates her boyfriend for using styrofoam cups and uses pop-psych lingo, though in temperament she seems less like Oprah than Ilse, She-Wolf of the S.S.

As for Brad himself, he's a quivering mess, shrill and childish, but so oppressed that he's meant to be sympathetic. It's hard to tell how much of this affect is in the character, and how much in Farnsworth's performance; suffice it to say that the first reference to Brad as being out of graduate school comes across totally incongruous, since up to that point he has seemed to be about 16. Everyone is so unpleasant that the play becomes painful; it's like watching twougly five-year-olds kicking a puppy.

For 45 minutes, "Rust" alternates between scenes of sheer cruelty and a type of low comedy, provided mostly by the shrieking, dull neighbor Miss Nancy (Tegan Willever), and a few familiar jokes about shouting in libraries and Geraldo Rivera. In the end, after his escape collapses just as his siblings have predicted, Brad comes close to a moral moment of truth--should he kill his mother, for all their sakes?--and Farnsworth does a good job in this scene, alternately stricken and hopeful. But the tension of the moment is dissipated in a ghostly flashback, which takes us back to the months before the lost baby died, leading us to believe that it was this event that pushed Mamma over the edge. As this was crystal clear already, this final scene comes across as contrived and melodramatic.

Despite a few good moments--usually having to do with the siblings' reactions to Mamma's seizures, which run a convincing range from sympathy to loathing to terror--most of "Rust" is slack and predictable. Farnsworth has managed to build a play that works, but only barely--hopefully he will continue to produce more sophisticated plays, and allow this first effrt to fall back into the gentle obscurity it deserves.