A Short Safari Through Purgatory

This is no ordinary undergraduate play. It is neither pretentious nor a clumsy piece of juvenilia that one sponsors but secretly dislikes. In fact John Hallowell's Safari is even more than "promising." It is amusing and polished, even moving at times. And of all curious things to receive from an undergraduate playwright, it is a good evening's entertainment.

In Safari, Hallowell attempts what every young writer attempts and usually fails at. He writes from his own experience and, God bless us, generally succeeds in changing personal trauma into art.

Most of Safari is brittle, sharp banter between four debauchees in their twenties who, in various Combinations want to seduce each other and corrupt an already confused undergraduate named Achilles (John Kemp). Gentry Sanger, our host for the evening, is a notorious faggot who "oozes into Widener" to pick up new boyfriends. Paul Schmidt plays him with reptilian smoothness. He wriggles and postures and drawls through airy marvels of sinister affectation. He is the devil in drag. His counterpart Ann Timmons (Joanna Vogel) coldly pursues men. She snatches up innocent victims like Achilles, inflames them and casts them off. Ann is supposed to be bitchy, but Miss Vogel is too callous to make me believe she could arouse anyone's lust. Peter Gaylord (Peter Hoagland) loves Ann Timmons and wants to take her away from the filth of Cambridge to Cape Cod, where he teaches high school. He stands for the home truths: love over lust, sincerity in place of affectation. But again I don't believe a real Ann Timmons would ever sit with him at the Casa-B, much less leave the Square with him for a quiet life on the Cape. As written, the part of Gaylord is too much sermon and too simple to offer a meaningful alternative to Gentry's glittering evil. Hoagland's acting accentuates this defect in the script; his morality has no teeth.

John Kemp (Achilles) has plenty of bite and some of the funniest lines in the play. ("Puke much, gentry?) He does his family name credit, playing the simple fool to his hyper-sophisticated friends and cutting through their chi-chi with a fine sense of timing.

As for the remaining character, Sylvia Bernstein (Jane Wingert), I'm not convinced the play needs another nymphomaniac, but Miss Wingert is the only member of the cast whose disgust with Cambridge is at all compelling.

Director Thomas E. Vachon keeps this talky play moving briskly. His pacing does credit to a first play of unexpected sophistication.