Doctor Knock

Dr. Knock, Jules Romains' astringent comedy on the triumph of medicine over the modern mind, received a barely lukewarm performance at the play's opening Tuesday night in the Tufts' Arena.

The play, in a lively new English translation by Germaine and Marston Balch, bears resemblance to Moliere's classic Imaginary Invalid in that Romains, like Moliere, uses medicine as a foil to pierce the frailties of human nature and lay bare the mechanisms which dominate the bourgeois mind.

With biting satire and rollicking wit, the play portrays a medical charlatan who parlays a non-existent practice in a rural French village into a hospital (formerly the town's hotel) brimming with the hypochondriactic citizenry.

Dr. Knock, who exchanges his practice in Lyons for that of Dr. Parpalaid in the village of St. Maurice, quickly finds that not only are his patients virtually non-existent, but also that the few he possesses have already paid their bills (which they do annually) to his predecessor. By a series of "free" consultations and by engaging the support of influential citizens, however, Knock buffaloes the rural characters with a bewildering description of their maladies. No one escapes the cryptic medical language and anatomical charts which the doctor employs to convince the strapping citizens of their multiple ills.

Then Parpalaid, disillusioned with city life, returns only to find his favorite hangout, the village hotel, now turned into a bustling hospital. Parpalaid begs Knock to reveal his secret, which is what the charlatan terms the "science of medicine." Romains is deadly serious in his concern with modern man's susceptibility to pseudo-scientific worship, and Knock's final manipulations of Parpalaid result in an ironic and completely unsentimental ending.

Despite the serious overtones, the play is above all comedy, which is what evidently escaped the Tufts' players. The cast was unfortunately headed by Fred Blais, who, miscast as Knock, turned in a dismal performance. While maintaining the Doctor's mock-solemnity, he not only failed to imbue him with the necessary dynamism and authority, but utterly lacked Knock's resourcefulness, wit, and ability to manipulate people. His awkward use of medical instruments, moreover, was not calculated to convince the audience that he was more than a bungler, which Knock most emphatically is not.

Although the first act progressed at a fast clip, the second and third slowed down where they should have speeded up. In the last act, Knock's monotoned passages which demanded lyricism and droned on until the audience was rescued from sleep only by the bustling hotel-staff scene at the end.

The first act, though awkwardly staged around an automobile resembling a behemoth bathtub, was saved by the amusing inefficiency of the duffer Parpalaid (played by Sobert Dargie) and the witty, if sometimes forced, interpretation of his hayseed wife played by Priscilla Foley.

Knock's bored aloofness instead of swaggering magnetism mars the second act and destroys the delicate balance between comedy and satire. In place of a series of quick, witty repartees between Knock and his clients, we have a succession of labored interviews which destroy the comic and bury the satiric.

Credit is due H. Henry Franck's interpretation of the town crier and Paul Fithian's performance as the gullible schoolmaster. M. Mousquet is only sketchily defined by Jack McGrail, and the succession of rural bumpkins who fall for Knock's prescriptions emerge from the clinic like so many neatly packaged sandwiches from an automat.

The translation of the play does manage to preserve the flavor of the French original, and the imaginative variety of French provincial costumes by Joy Pranulis help to offset a generally roughshod performance. But despite a few graces, Tufts definitely winds up third on the list of this week's dramatic offerings.