The Advocate

The Advocate's Spring Isue is distinguished by a slick and promising First Act of a play by Arthur Kopit. Five essays on theatrical matters--comprising the rest of the magazine--seem of little consequence.

Kopit has an unusual talent for working hard and getting things done. One suspects he must write swiftly because one reads him swiftly. One imagines he spends his time thinking out what he will write, because he avoids the confusion and inconsistency that often infect work by young writers.

Although his prolific output has received an impresive circulation in the University--in one play produced last spring by the Harvard Dramatic Club, in two others set to music at Dunster House a couple of weeks ago, in another that was broadcast on WHRB, Kopit has revealed no startling point of view that seems original or significant. His achievement so far lies in his technical excellence, in an ability to construct characters and plots that are credible, and in a talent for speaking in a lyrical and pleasing voice. That is no mean feat.

To Dwell In A Palace of Strangers is obviously Kopit's most ambitious published work to date. The segment printed in The Advocate is more suggestive than satisfying--yet one must make allowances for First Acts because, in establishing characters and their relations to each other, a playwright must talk and explain. Hopefully, Kopit's audience will find in the unfinished play a meaning and point of view that his earlier work has lacked.

Certainly he gives indications he will provide. Set in a place somewhere in Louisiana that is not altogether unlike a Williams, a Faulkner, a Welty locale, Kopit's play concerns the visit of an old school friend to the home of a robust insurance man, his supremely sensitive wife, and their brattish children. The visitor, Emmanuel Moon, a graciously sinister spectre, says he has come to collect on an adolescent promise made by George "Chopper" Feering, a raging "bull" who raised living standards in the country by convincing dying old men to buy insurance instead of medical care.

The "promise" implies a homosexual guarantee. Mannie says Chopper had agreed to go on a fishing trip with him and Mannie wants the promise honored. They go to bed, separately, a figure is seen spying on Chopper abed with his wife Joanna, and the family's cat, heard screeching, is subsequently knifed "in a certain place." Big he-man Chopper advocates locking all the windows and doors, and I don't blame him.

Mannie's character is unfortunately undeveloped thus far; Joanna, ignorant of Chopper's past relations with Mannie, seems unduly and too suddenly horrified by the cat's screech; and the southern lingo seems unnecessary because any director knows how white trash talks without Kopit's telling him. But the play moves quickly and convincingly, perhaps as an aping of Williams, but not without its own vigor.

Other pieces in the magazine are by Elinor Hughes, who is Boston's own Hedda Hopper, Elliot Norton of Hearst's Daily Record, William Van-Lennep, Joel Henning, and the editors. The latter's attack on CRIMSON drama criticism fails to slay a dragon that is probably much easier prey than The Advocate, unaccountably, estimates. Apart from its misrepresentation and misquotation, the essay is inoffensive to the Plympton Street conscience. It is more offensive to the community conscience, however, for it warns people not to believe everything they read in the papers. Not even newspapermen ask readers to do that.