The Garden

Into the life of a thoroughly conventional family comes a very unusual stranger: a natural person in the midst of artifice, a storm center in the midst of tedium. The family reacts and changes, until at last, when the stranger disappears, their lives are altered forever.

Ida Picker '67 has twisted this familiar plot and given it something of a new ending. Her stranger, Sophia, has become engaged to the family's elder son, Danny, and he is bringing her home. She enters a house full of forgotten ambitions and of subsurface unhappiness. Danny's father, Sam, is bored by his wife; the couple barely tolerates self-centered grandmother Eleanor; and all three have lost contact with swingin' teen younger brother George. The house is heavy with inertia; the mother wanted to be an artist, the grandmother a pianist. Sam was once a critic of note, but, like the others, has now given up on himself.

Beautiful strangers are expected to take control of situations like this. Sophia's presence disconcerts the mother, excites Sam and the grandmother to curiosity, and enraptures George. He senses a kindred spirit. When he hears that her younger brother is organizing theatres in Mississippi, he runs away from home and heads down South to prove himself.

But in The Garden, the conventional has resilience; the family does not give in. Though Sophia attracts each of them, none will give himself up to her. By the end of the play, the father has returned inertia, the grandmother to self-indulgence, and George to his home. Sophia had warned him "you want speed, not a place to ride to;" he closes the play with a speech about motorcycles that ends "The speed! The beautiful speed!"

Miss Picker has a talent for writing dialogue; the best scenes in The Garden bring two characters face-to-face. But when three or four are gathered togther, all hell breaks loose. The ensemble scenes seem curiously inaccurate. Everyone talks as if he had forgotten anyone else was present. I think The Garden would play passably--perhaps well--if a virtuoso actress were found for the part of Sophia. Certainly the play deserves a better production than the one it is presently receiving at Agassiz. Nervous acting, and very little directing at all, have emphasized the difficulties of the script. Miss Picker herself has chosen to take on the role of Sophia, a very difficult assignment. At one time or another, Sophia is called beautiful, inspiring, fascinating, a good dancer, and a brilliant actress (she must play a gypsy and a clown in bits within the show). I don't think there's an actress at Radcliffe equipped to play the part well, and Miss Picker, though she has several good moments, is hampered by a monotonous and not altogether pleasant voice.

No one in the cast has an especially distinguished evening except for Charles Degelman, an astonishingly good George. This obnoxious 15-year-old seemed to me much the worst-written part in the show, but Degelman convinced me that I was wrong in four infallibly funny appearances. Reynold Smith, as Sam, and Peter McKenzie as Dan also had creditable scenes.