The Theatregoer Morning, Noon, and Night at the Loeb through November 22

THE LOEB'S Morning Noon, and Night is not so much vulgar as it is confused, not so much confused as it is funny, not so much funny as it is painful. And painful precisely because its triptych view of America is so very sad.

Israel Horovitz's Morning opens the evening of one-act plays with promises of (perhaps) a new day, a new world. In the midst of Harlem, a black family-a little like good old Kingtish and Sapphire, only a hellever lot tougher-have just popped a few pills that turn them white. Overnight. But as should be expected, devolving into a white man isn't that simple a proposition. In effect the play becomes a roller coaster excursion through a series of assumed racial identities (along with their accompanying crises) until. finally. Horovitz's white blacks decide to stick with their blackness.

Yet while the niece may be dark in theme, David Boorstin's direction sustains a lightness of execution. If anything, the pace sometimes gets a bit too frenetic. The musical backing of The Rhythm Method adds a driving hard sell that puts over much of the rest of the play quite successfully.

As for the actors. they quickly establish an uncanny competence and flexibility that extends through most of the evening. John Archibald as Tillich, a well-meaning white liberal who some how can't accent the fact that his 14-year old daughter has been raped by a black school chum on the first day of a new bussing program, and Marty Ritter as Gertrude. a black Mama with pretensions to middle-class suburbia, are particularly well-cast.

Race so disposed of, Terrence McNally's Noon then proceeds to burlesque our other national bugaboo-sex, McNally's contribution brings together a variety of sexual perverts (and, in all honesty, some who are not so perverted). all of whom are responding to a series of titillating newspaper classifieds. The evening's most straight-forward stretch of comedy. it is probably also the evening's most entertaining bit. From Eric Davin's fag to Sharon Klurifs orgy-bent Flushing housewife, the cast spends much of its time variously undressed but never disconcerted. (Save that role for the audience.)

Noon. however, is not the bill's climax-it is Leonard Melfi's concluding Night that is the outstanding offering. Void of the earlier comedy. Night is set in a graveyard where the four corners of America have gathered to mourn the death of the enigmatic Cock Certain. Like the impoverished Italians of Pasolini's Teorama these Americans seem to be struggling, each to possess alone the memory of Cock Certain, perhaps their Christ, perhaps their Satan, surely their source of life. Their struggle though is ultimately a dance of death, as yet another enigmatic figure, a man dressed in white pied-pipers the players away.

As the Man, Tim Carden is absolutely splendid. His close to translucent animation, coupled with the funeral dirge of a backstage organ, would be breathtaking, if it were not actually so deathly peaceful. This, in addition to his other two characterizations earlier in the evening, establishes Carden as one of the most charismatic young acting personalities now about Harvard.

For all its flaws, Morning, Noon, and Night, which premiered on Broadway only last year, is an important experiment in Loeb programming. Boorstin has mounted a production of main stage importance. even if it might have been more at home in the more intimate surroundings of the Experimental Theatre. Nonetheless, the result is solid evidence that the invidious distinction that has often existed between the two Loeb stages is absurd.

As for the play itself: it was once thought that if one passed through the dark night of the soul, salvation was at hand, but. if Morning, Noon, and Night is any indication, for America that dark night may prove a dead end.