The Gamblers and The Marriage

Gogol's two one-actors are as littleknown as almost any plays produced at Harvard this year: there is only one copy of them in English at Widener, and the card catalogue at Lamont never heard of them. They are not bad plays, exactly, but we have sources of mild, spasmodically funny comedy nearer home, and it is no wonder that only the diligence of Eric Bentley has brought them to American attention.

Given better material to work with, the Leverett House actors might have created a very pleasant evening; done with high virtuosity, the plays might have been high entertainment. As it is, except for a long stretch of good comic writing at the beginning of The Marriage, Gogol provides only occasional wisps of straw for these actors to make bricks with.

The curtain-raising Gamblers is a tricky little farce, exhibiting a subtle brand of card sharps who operate in ever-widening circles of duplicity. Apart from their penchant for peculation, Gogol's characters are not a very lively bunch, so it is all to the good that director William Kelley has decked out his production with all sorts of bizarrerie, most notably makeup in vivid shades of red, blue, white, and green. Set designer Roberta Weiner has provided black walls for her hotel room, and it is lit (by John Herzog and Charles Kennel) mostly with stark white shafts. It's odd, very odd, but it comes off.

However, Mr. Kelley has tried very few of the sight gags that are needed to make up for the paucity of jokes in the script, and nobody in his cast can create laughs out of thin air. John Wolfson is scarcely what Gogol had in mind for the chief conniver, but his cold authority works very well instead of the greasy glibness the author intended. Mr. Wolfson knows how to command a stage, and his performance is one of the evening's best. As the other gambler, Ronald Coralian does a straight part well.

The Marriage lacks the ingenious plotting of its predecessor, but for half its length it is refreshingly funny. After that, it becomes apparent that neither the reluctant hero, nor the hesitant heroine, nor the crowd of secondary suitors, nor the meddling friend, nor the coarse matchmaker, have been conceived with much imagination. Gogol portrays the Russian bourgeoisie, with only slight exaggeration and stereotyping, in all its pomposity, stupidity, and avarice. After The Marriage one can understand the October Revolution.

The L.H.D.S. people do much toward brightening the mediocrity. (The costumes by Peggy Decker and Judith Kuznets are especially sumptuous and picturesque.) In the leading role, William Graham makes a dignified and interesting figure out of Gogol's pompous cold. Karen Christiani as the object of his apprehensions is rather more wooden than the role requires, but ingenuous and pretty. Many of Alison Keith's lines ring hollow, but her matchmaker is a lively old rip, and she's funny, so what the hell. John Wolfson is occasionally funny as the friend who actually makes the match, but familiarity lessens the effect of many of his mannerisms.

Director Jan Hartman might, to good effect, have sat down hard on most of the members of his supporting cast: When the principals are off-stage, Robert Johnston's blessed quietude is the eye in a hurricane of overacting. Otherwise, Mr. Hartman has done a good job: his occasional attempts at comic business are almost uniformly successful. JULIUS NOVICK