Bernadine

From her new play Bernadine, one might believe that Mary Chase divides all adolescents into two groups--those who find outlets for their frustration in fights, minor destruction and fantasy and the remaining few who never manage to let go at all. For the main characters in Miss Chase's comedy are teen-age boys, loud, boastful, and insecure because of their constant scrimmages with girls and parents. I will not argue that these attributes do not describe adolescent behavior, but by themselves they are quite inadequate for a script which is obviously intended as an intelligent commentary on pre-adult life. So inadequate that Bernadine would fall flat on its downy face if it were not for skilful performances by some of its principals and Guthrie McClintic's excellent direction.

Bernadine itself is a series of much too obvious situations. In the first of two acts, Miss Chase sets up her story with the care of someone balancing billiard balls on the edge of pockets. Then she taps each in; there is never doubt about which ball is going into which pocket. Buford Weldy, played by Johnny Stewart, is one of the destructive type. Immediately, it is made clear that Weldy's parents are divorced, his mother holds him on a gold plated leash, and that he has a reputation for jumping any girl he meets. For these reasons Weldy hangs around with a group of suburban Amboy Dukes, whom his mother detests, rather than a young grind called Vernon, whom everybody else detests. Driven to extremes by constant date refusals, Weldy goes out to pick up a girl and ends up with a 30 year-old friend of his mother. What Weldy doesn't know is that there is a delicious young sixteen-year old girl (the most popular one in town) who secretly loves him. These are the set-ups, pushed in with a blunt cue.

Much better is the by-play between Weldy and the gang. Its leader is perhaps the most sympathetic character, played by Jack Kerr who is a frequent Brattle Theatre performer. More than any of the others, Kerr is able to transmit the fights between maturity and boyishness which are typical of adolescents. Stewart seems too much like a morose Henry Aldrich. And in the same way, his mother, Irene Hervey, never become a real individual; she is always the doting and misguided parent. Beyerly Lawrence, however, does quite well in the confusing part of the mother's friend; it is a fuzzy hole because the script never adequately explains why she let herself be picked up in the first place. Another former Brattler, Michael Wager, does his best as Vernon, the grind, but this also is a pretty flat part.

It will still be a few weeks before Bernadine opens in New York, if it ever gets there, and I am sure that Miss Chase will do some rewriting. But it will be a difficult job; her situations are trite and her characters too stereotyped. With only a few amusing by the way scenes to work with, she will have to virtually remake Bernadine, if it is to enjoy any thing near a successful run.