Love...A Bizarre Evening

When I saw the title of the production, I wondered whether to hope for an intelligent connection between the three plays. One of the things that impressed me most about the evening as it emerged was that there really was a theme, a suggestion of which emerged rather naturally from each play.

The X factor, the essential condition for these love stories--love stories only by rather loose definition--is fantasy: half-conscious, almost conspiratorial self-delusion. In the first play, Tennessee Williams's slight but appealing This Property is Condemned, Miss DeMott's fantasy life takes the whole stage. For a long time Tom (George Rosen)--with the audience--is allowed simply to watch while she unfolds the world. She does it well, and when ultimately everyone has to admit that they do not believe in it, they are utterly convinced of the real necessity for her magnetic and pathetic fancy. Mr. Rosen remains to the right degree uncommitted and self-effacing and so becomes, in the short time he has, both foil and character. The effect is good.

Following this, and also directed by Ken Sateriale, is Saroyan's The Ping Pong Players which is best glossed over. Nick Fuller and Miss DeMott do an adequate job with what is at hand, but as Saroyan states, it is a trivial play about trivial people. An attempt at fancy, it is artificial and drab.

The Saroyan failure matters scarcely at all, however, because the final piece, Garcia Lorca's The Love of Don Perlimpin for Belisa in the Garden, is nearly perfect. It is utterly compact; the depth and the texture of the fantasy are established in the first moment by a lute, by Joseph Ingelfinger's clever valentine set, and by the action of the two sprites who manipulate players and audience. There is no trace of strain in Lorca's imaginative forays; he evokes intense and genuine emotion without fighting against the unreal setting of the theatre. But because the play recognizes and uses this unreality, it comes off less well in the reading than other comparable drama, and is not easy to imagine off-stage. Joel Schwartz, and uniformly fine acting, has made something really fine from a difficult play.