Theatre Losing the Charles

THE DEMISE of the Charles Playhouse is only the most recent manifestation of what everybody thinks he knows about theater. Has the baton been passed to music or to film, as evidenced by the Orson Welles' opening a second theater at the time the Charles close? The lethargy of Boston theater, any producer will say, stems from money. There is no money. As stated in the October 30 Crimson, the directors of the Charles decided to close because the prospects were not good. But the prospects for support in a city with only a handful of commercial theaters devoted to local productions are excellent. Something else is lacking, and the plays on their way to New York rush into the vacuum.

The latest crop of these plays is difficult to describe, but they seem more like fraternity-nite skits than ever. There is the revival of the thirties musical with staging by Busby Berkeley. There is the story of Noah and the flood adapted to spotlight Danny Kaye. Like desert dustballs, No No Nanette and Two by Two blow through New Haven, Washington, and Boston collecting whatever money and publicity they can find on the trail, and finally unravel their filthy mess on Broadway. The major part of Boston theater, especially with the disappearance of the Charles, is devoted to this publicity game. These Boston "hits" drain theaters, backing, and audiences in their consuming lust for popularity on their way to New York. Least of all can these productions be described as companies on tour offering something new and exciting to the public.

In New York, in the middle of this eddying pool of dollar bills, long lines, and Clive Barnes reviews floats Hello Dolly. longest running musical on Broadway. Hello Dolly is about money. It makes money for stars and producers: it concerns a widow remarrying money. The current Dolly (does it really matter?) is Ethel Merman. She looks like an inflated scarecrow and struts about on stage in absolute refusal to act. As she blows kisses to the middle-aged ladies, recites her lines in a clarion voice, and charms a grey, indeterminate audience, it becomes apparent that no one but the chorus members-least of all the audience-cares about the play. It is an excuse for going outside, for spending money, for making money, for exchanging one boredom for another.

There is an incident in Vanity Fair in which the genteel officers and ladies of England, on their way to fight the battle of Waterloo, pause to take in an Opera. We do not know or care what Opera it is. The audience cares only about the audience. The production is an excuse for an Opera, and Hello Dolly is an excuse for a musical. The experience is faintly amusing and excruciatingly boring. But we keep the appraisal secret for the producers say the real problem is money.

ABSENCE of money may be killing the theater, but paradoxically its presence is just as lethal. Dependence on sheerly popular appeal trumped up in out-of-town tryouts destroys more surely than boredom or even mediocrity. Theater disappears in the rush for backers to retrieve their investments. Broadway may now have found the perfect subject matter in its latest major musical, The Rothschilds, but perhaps it will only discover just how dull theater-material lucre can be. The real problem is money-not its absence, but its suffocating presence, its influence in cheapening quality, and ability to beget itself and only itself. Where the producer should be a means, he has become an and. When theater becomes a vehicle for money, it vanishes.

Back in Boston, and in Cambridge, a similar problem exists. Lamentably, Harpo has vanished for a number of reasons, but among them is lack consistently exciting and varied plays to produce, of box-office excitement. Harpo in the past picked although the productions themselves were sometimes shakey. Perhaps their failure came when they tried to be most commercial. At any rate, it's back to musicals for Agassiz this term, which can be a great deal of fun, if one is lonely for company.

During the summer, Hope flourished in Cambridge. The Loeb Drama Center had not only its professional resident company in a well-balanced program which was commercially and critically successful, but also a company in the Experimental Theater. Somewhat misleadingly called "The Manhattan Project," the six actors and one director had worked together intensively for two years with apparently messianic indifference to commercial pressure. Their production of Alice in Wonderland, an hour and a half wonder but the result of fourteen months of work, deserved its success in Cambridge and now runs off Broadway. Their five week stay at the Loeb amounted to an out-of-town tryout, but consisted of giving-giving instruction, giving experience, rather than taking. There were of course many specific problems with each of these undertakings, but the Loeb itself became an activated unit generating excitement in a rather uninspiring summer.

Alice in Wonderland has managed to exist outside of institutions like the Charles Playhouse, and Off Broadway, although it resides in these places from time to time. Perhaps an enterprise such as the Charles or the theaters around the Boston Common can no longer support any valuable theater. Even Jacques Brel has gone to a hotel cabarer, so far with little success. The experience of recent events shows that the most exciting theater occurs within non-profit institutions, where financial backing does not star, but rather the audience, actors and directors. Our perception and intense enjoyment are furthered, so that we remember fully rather than forget at the theater.