Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Wednesday, October 29, 1969
Page Two THE MICHIGAN DAILY Wednesday, October 29, 1 969
-- drama-
American black comedy
poetry and prose
Thom Gunn reads his poems well
By DEBORAH LINDEIMAN
John Fernald's company at
Meadow Brook Theater is offer-
ig two one-act plays--Albee 's
The American Dream and Peter
Shaffers Black Comedy -
through the weekend, after
which they will move to the
Detroit Institute of Arts for a
week. The plays are b o t h
comedies, but Albee's has a
grimness that turns it into a
species of black humor which
despite its misleading title, Black
Comedy is entirely without.
I dont think these are the
best. plays to do together of
an evening because, among oth-
er things, Black Comedy is too
long and could very well be fea-
tured alone. But they do fit to
the people in the company, and
of course casting for repertory
theater has its exigencies. Judg-
ing from one performance, this
company seems on the whole
wbright and alert, and some-
times talented.
I'm not sure I've altogether
figured out why The American
Dream is called what it is call-
ed, but I make of it this: There
is a gorgeous "Young Man"
played in fine get-up by Toby
Thompkins, whom it is a sur-
prise to see in an altogether
different role in the second
play) who turns up at the end
and who refers to himself as
"the American dream." He
seems in his astonishing beauty
to be what everybody is just
craving to adopt in one way or
another but also what they will
inevitable destroy. Everybody
in the cast, that is, and since
they are supposed to be Amer-
ican prototypes, by extension
everybody in America.
So I make of it that Amer-
icans are both idealistic and vic-
ious: Alboe's scorn is as heavy
as his "moral" is paper-thin,
and this radical disparity makes
for a strange dramatic schizo-
phrenia. Director Anthony Sti-
mac, moreover, has not manag-
ed to find a style for his actors
that gracefully combines their
surface fluff with their latent
ominousness, and somehow the
play never clicks into place.
It is some sore of fable or
parable done in the mode of
theater of the absurd -- with
unexplained appearances, loom-
ing unnamed menaces and only
scanty background for w h a t
occurs on stage. Its characters
are merely symbols, and the la-
cerating animal-like confronta-
tions so characteristic of Albee
are conveyed rather than bel-
lowed as usual.
There is a mommy called
Mommy (Elisabeth Orion> and
a daddy called Daddy (Richard
Curnock - a nice typical
American couple. Their talk is
typically mundane. Mommy is
a cuddly little castrator a n d
Daddy of course is a castrate. As
he play opens and they wait for
a late guest to show up, Mommy
batters at Daddy with darling
litte stories about buying a hat
and going to her women's club.
Then entrs Grandma. Mom-
my's mommy whom M o inm n y
keeps threatening "to send away
in a van." and finally the uest
Mrs. B a r k e r, "a professional
woman' with an ultra-feminine
baby voice, who has come for
reasons which neither she nor
they are sure of.
She first turns out to be the
chairman of Mommy's women's
club and then the head of one
Bye-Bye Adoption Service. She
finds that she may have come
in this latter capacity w h e n
Grandma maliciously divulges
Mommy's and Daddy's grue-
some past to her: Once upon a
time they adopted a boy child
and when it did the usual
things like crying and eatin
and wetting its bed-they grad-
ually, member-by-member, tore
it apart. Mrs. Barker remembers
that she might be here after all
in r'elation to an adoption.
Then enters vindication in
the person of the above-men-
tioned Adonis who first appears
to be the "van man" that
Grandma is being threatened
By MARY BARON
Before reading his poems
Thom Gunn asked t h a t Mr.
Berrigan, in introducing him,
explain his "peculiar accent:"
he is British, but has lived in
the United States since 1954.
And one does hear a slight con-
fusion of the expected accents,
the resulting voice more care-
ful than the American, 1 e s s
sharp to our ears t h a n the
British. I found it less strange,
however, than I did Miss Stev-
enson's- reading last week, na-
tive though she is
Mr Gunn reads well, I think.
There is ease in his introduc-
tory comments and a sense of
his care for the language in his
reading of t h e poems them-
selves. Rhythm and stress are
audible, pleasurably so, and the
feeling is allowed to r e s t in
what is said. He does not re-
sort to histrionics, nor fall, as
Miss Brooks did, into prose in-
tonation. To hear t h e poems
read aloud becomes an addi-
tional experience and not just
an alternative one gains some-
thing.
For the poems themselves, I
admire Mr. Gunn's work very
much, enough to own four of
h i s books, which, considering
my income, is very much indeed.
He writes always with a sense
of the language; he knows his
tools. His lines, in or out of me-
ter, are rhythmically interest-
ing. He uses rhyme in w a y s
which are sometimes downright
sneaky. And he gets the thing
right - the detail, the summa-
tion; they are right in observa-
tion, in consideration, for the
poem. Not always, but m o r e
than often enough. The la s t
eight lines of "Considering the
Snail," for example:
at least half of t h e book My
Sad Captains, to take an easy
a n d concentrated example,
which I would read for what
they say, even if I were not so
intrigued with how the hell he
got it down just that way. The
title poem of this book is not
only one of Mr. Gunn's best, it
is, I think, one of the best any-
one has around just now. It is
the last poem he read and the
only one which he read without
comment. And he is quite right
- it needs none.
One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends,
and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to
shine!
but before they fade they
stand
perfectly embodied, all
the past lapping them like a
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convul-
sion.
They remind me, distant now.
True, they are not at rest yet.
but now that they are indeed
apart, winnowed from fail-
ures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.
with, and then the grown twin
of the dismembered baby. And
so Grandma shrewdly arranges
to have things take their nasty
course:
Barbara Bryne as Grandma
has the longest part and the
best lines in the play. They are
full of cynical observations about
how middle-aged people think
of old people ("old people whim-
per and belch"; "old people
have colitis and lavender p e r-
fume" and she cuts through
Mommy's and Daddy's sacca-
rine hypocrisy with the s a m e
hefty honesty. Well done as it is,
however, the part of Grandma
unbalances the rest of the play,
and this plus some sluggish
moments due to snags in timing
made the performance that I
saw a bit lumpy.
Black Comedy goes along quite
merrily - everyone in the cast
seems to be having a good time.
The play is built upon a single
sublime idea which is that in
the dark many intimacies and
hostilities that the light con-
ceals can be expressed. Things
come to light, or some such
thing ( the comedy is really
white). But the same jokei is
carried on for so long that,
though at the beginning I laugh-
ed quite a lot, as things drag-
ed along my reactions g r e w
milder.
A power failure is the pivotal
event of the drama. When the
power fails the stage lights go
on and you are supposed to
know that things are mighty
dark. When matches are struck
or candles lit the lights dim,
and when they are extinguish-
ed the lights flicker back on,
and so on.
The rest of the play is just
English Victorian drawing room
comedy remade -- rival lovers
of one sort or another, m i s-
taken identities, domestic tiffs,
exasperation and talk-talk-talk,
not all of it meaningful, but
Victorians talked a lot. Brinds-
ley being about to show his art
work (he is an artist) to a rich
old German art conoisseur, and
his trying to adorn the occasion
by hiding his own shabby furni-
ture and spiriting in some of
the "objets" of a neighboring
queer named Harold who col-
lects porcelain and other tasty
items. Obviously the queer
wouldn't approve it he know,
but unluckily the blow-out brings
him to Brindsley's flat in search
of consolation and luckily this
same blow-out hides what
Brindsley has there of Harold's
possessions.
The stage is very busy, what
with much moving and draping
of furniture (to hide its pre-
sence from Harold). And na-
turally the prevailing "dark-
ness" means that whenever the
players move at all they have
to pretend (the stage is really
lighted remember) to be grop-
ing and stumbling about as well
as missing or else bumping
smack into other players. Some
do this better than others and
it gets less funny the longer and
more furiously it goes on.
Compliments to Jeremy Rowe
as Harold, who obviously has a
heap of fun in the part, and to
Toby Thompkins who, as Brinds-
ley, stumbles around with great
finesse. The sets for both pro-
ductions are by Richard Davis.
Starting November 13, the com-
pany will be doing T. S. Eliot's
The Cocktail Party.
r-
Tie University of Michigan
i l1 h
f. ed
. All
I think is that if later
I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.
There are also other poems,
is acceptinr' petitions
for the position of
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FREAKS
dir. TOM BROWNING (1932)
This crazy, bizarre, wacky world of the
circus freak is presented in this unfor-
gettable work.
"You know what you have to bring for this one."
7 & 9 -,r- ARCHITECTIRE
University of MichigansSchool of Music
Presents
1969-1970 FESTIVAL OF
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
TONIGHT
Hill Auditorium
BASSETT-"Collect" for chorus and tape
SCHAFER-"Gita" for chorus, bass choir, and tape
University Chamber Choir
Thomas Hilbish, Conductor
STOCKHAUSEN-"Spirol" (first American
performance)
William Albright, organ
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