'That Day': Dante in a Workshop

The Loeb Experimental Theatre is in some ways not a theatre at all. It has more in common with a workshop or a classroom, where new ideas can be born, developed or rejected. The process of education can go on frankly there, free of the careerist anxieties that attend a polished Main Stage play.

That Day They Read of It No More uses the Loeb Experimental Theatre the way it should be used. As an "evening at the theatre," the play is a failure. But since it is not an evening at the theatre but a twenty-minute experiment with a work still in progress, it is a qualified success.

The play is based on the story of Francesca and Paolo, from Dante's Inferno. Francesca, the beautiful wife of Giovanni Malatesta, a hunchbacked nobleman, is in love with her husband's brother, Paolo. Paolo has visited Francesca every day for a year to read her romantic poetry. One day he reads her the tale of how Launcelot first kissed Queen Guenivere, and that day is "the day they read of it no more." When Giovanni sees them Jeave arm in arm, he decides to murder them.

That Day, written and directed by Timothy Mayer '66, is a fine poem but a bad play in its present form. Mayer's verse is always economical and occasionally strong. Too often, though, it is overly economical: Mayer sometimes tries to cram so many levels of meaning into a single line that none of them comes through when the line is spoken, however clear it may be as written verse. There is practically no action in the play, and hardly any conversation to replace it. Instead, the play is a string of long speeches virtually unbroken by interludes of dialogue or stage business. The result is extremely static and ritualistic.

All three actors have chosen to interpret their parts as grimly as possible. Mark Bramhall is appropriately bitter and cynical as Giovanni, but his interpretation leaves out the third dimension of grotesque humor the character should have. Elise Sweet (Francesca) and Joel Martin (Paolo) perform competently; Miss Sweet especially brings fierce intensity to her role.

Mayer assumes, mistakenly, that his audience will be familiar with the story of Francesca and Paolo, and will be prepared to concentrate on his verse without having to worry about following the plot. Since the play is quite comprehensible and interesting as poetry if one knows the story it uses as a jumping-off point, the audience should have been provided with mimeographed synopocs. (This will probably be done tonight.)

It is worth repeating that this is basically a workshop performance of a play that is not yet in its final form, a truly experimental production rather than a conventional play in a small theatre. It is likely that changes will have been made by tonight's performance, since Mayer and his actors are willing to learn from experience. The value of the Experimental Theatre lies in exactly this sort of innovation.