Plays The Open Theatre At the Loeb May 15; 16, 17

FOR ANY theatre-gore who still has a longing for the old virtues, the Open Theatre cannot help but create a love-hate relationship. During the company's production of Terminal. the audience is treated to a lesson in embalming and a military-physical induction into the world of the dead. In Serpent, an improvisation on the Old Testament. eating the Apple means eating two crates of apples, throwing apples, giving apples to the audience-you can make up the rest. Because the company remains an open theatre in which the emphasis is on process and technique, a performance for them becomes a phase of the rehearsals, perhaps not as good as some of the earlier phases. In fact, the plays are probably more fun to rehearse than perform. On one hand, the acting and inspiration are often simplistic, the verbal content a makeshift, and the net result a series of disconnected routines. On the other hand, the acting is stark, direct, and risky, particularly in playing out whatever seems appropriate (like dry copulating during a reading of the Biblical "begats" in Serpent ). And because the open development asks for a total commitment, the simultaneous collaboration of playwrigth, director, and actors becomes a self-sustaining system.

And no doubt self-satisfying, but they have not yet conceived how an audience should fit into their plans. Our ambivalence comes from the Open Theatre's distinction between entertainment (which they leave to others) and acting (which they keep for themselves).

Perhaps an actor can explain the Open Theatre's existence better than any analysis. Ray Barry, 31, went to Brown, played in Harvard Stadium, became a long-shoreman, all before joining the Open Theatre. He says he needs it to survive. He feels the company is tired of these productions and will probably drop them for a new repertoire which may take three years to develop.

The amount of personal commitment typified by Barry distinguishes the company from most others, and in some respects their goals resemble those of the now-fragmented Living Theatre. Under the direction of Joseph Chaikin and Roberta Sklar, the Open Theatre has toured Europe and feels the same political commitment as the Living Theatre.

They do not live communally, but they stress self-revelation collectively and individually. In Serpent, the action moves from a stylized assassination of Kennedy to a series of personal reflections: "I have slept with men and women and with a man and a woman together but collapsed because I am a gentle person," says one actress. Another follows up, "I could have married a rich man and lived in a big house, but no, I'm a freak."

SERPENT AND TERMINAL, the company's collective efforts, are very different plays, but both rely on this technique. Both are a "proposition" for the body andsoul. If I were to see either play again I would be bored with the routines and blackouts, since what energy they develop comes in part from the question, "What do they do next?" At the end of Serpent, for example, comes a surprise ending (which I will not reveal because it does not take place). As the actors sing, "We were sailing along, on moonlight bay," they drift out into the now ever-so-slightly per-spiring audience and simply sit down with them and fade away.

At the end, we can walk out exclaiming, "It's been done to me!" But what? Did we see the garden of Eden a new? Death anew? Did we see anything? These plays, which are finally mute gestures, appropriately leave it all an Open Question. But at any rate take an hour-and-a-half to see any one of these plays (preferably Serpent ). They are political only by a broad stretch of the imagination, but they do stretch the imagination.