Father, Son, and Holy Ghost

When Dr. Thomas tells his daughter Lisa that she will mary Martin Rosenbaum--a Jew, natch--"over my dead body," Father, Son, and Holy Ghost hits the depths of undergraduate soap opera. But it moves on quickly, and while Barry Forman's play never gets around to resolving itself, satisfactorally or otherwise, it certainly does get around.

From a ponderous opening in which Dr. Thomas's son shoots himself with an unloaded pistol, Ghost springs into a series of wonderfully funny monologues which, for the first act and much of the second, more than redeem a rather uninteresting plot. The last act is again ponderous as it attempts to make minimal order of the entanglements already created.

Phillip Thomas, the son, lives with Alice Shay, an impenetrable girl whose dead brother Raymond used to be Phillip's best friend, or, as Alice insinuates, maybe more than that. Phillip is extremely protective about his sister Lisa, who in turn lives with Martin, who is about the only straightforward character in the play.

Forman's serious dialogue--aside from excessive quotations--seems convincing. His characters might talk the way they do were they saying the things he has them say. But he tends to throw them at each other with an almost unbelievable viciousness, and without ever providing really adequate motivation. He also tries on occasion to sneak into a conversation a little background material that is obviously only for the audience's benefit.

Phillip's hatred for his father seems the most outrageously exaggerated relationship in the play. Take, for example, his climatic confrontation speech:

You know when you nauseated me most? Do you know? Not when you were retching all over the house. Not when you'd stagger through the hallway cursing us and threatening Mother. Not when we'd find you lying in the snow by the front step after a four day drunk. Not when the three of us had to carry you to your bad because you couldn't stand on your own two feet. No, none of these times. It was always the following day when you'd sobered up sufficiently enough to feel guilty. When you'd come back to us fawning and servile like a puppy that just messed on the carpet.

This confrontation resembles that between Edmund and his father in Long Day's Journey, except that Forman's doesn't come off.

Most of the conflict in his play ends up verbal, and the dialogue tends to overwhelm what little action there is. Yet enough of the individual lines and characters, and of the overall conception, works that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost almost does too.

Directors John Ross (in capital letters) and Forman (in small) have mounted a production that speaks well for the possibilities of House drama. William Schroeder's three-level set soundly avoids the difficulty of attempting scenery changes without the mechanics of a real theatre, and the level-to-level journeys are made through effective use of lighting.

Kathryn Walker reportedly took over the role of Alice somewhere in mid-rehearsal, but her performance certainly doesn't show it. Her monologues and John Hoffman's as Dr. Thomas contain all the best moments in the play. As Martin and Lisa, David Gordon and Maeve Kinkead manage to be funny without sacrificing character and vice versa, although neither can quite transcend a scene in which they manifest their romantic bliss into song.

The one really difficult role is that of Phillip, the never funny, not altogether believable son. Vincent Canzoneri seems a little too theatrical in the tense moments--which, come to think of it, are the only moments he has. But most of the difficulty lies with the part which should have been treated with more subtlety, as should have play.

The message of Father, Son and Holy Ghost comes, as one of its characters says of one of its lines, "off a Salada tea bag." And like most of those senseless proverbs, it's kind of funny.