Fit to be Hanged

I'M TIRED OF SEEING plays about neurotics. I admit, those lonely, childish people who languish in moldy O'Henry tenements still exist in fact, as well as on stage. Recorded by increasingly less able playwrights, though, their groping, screaming and shuddering is only faintly moving and scarcely distressing.

The two one-acts at the Loeb Ex this weekend, Not Enough Rope and Home Free, are weak plays of a wheezing genre. For her play, Elaine May borrowed the phrase "enough rope" from the title of a book of verse by Dorothy Parker. May sampled little of Parker's bittersweet wit, however, in constructing this glimpse of a bored, nervous girl who mimes her Judy Garland records to entertain herself. Only the precise direction by Lindsay Davis and the believable hysteria of Fran Davis, as the girl, Edith, save the play from coming off as a losing entry in a high school dramatic interp contest. Whether she is coating her mouth with red lipstick or trying to engage her neighbor Claude in conversation, Fran Davis evokes more sympathy than her role warrants. As the impassive Claude, David Warner is puzzling. Is he insipid, cold or cruel as he rejects Edith's pleas for attention? Warner needs to clarify his character, if for no other reason that to draw our attention away from trying to figure out whether the back wall of the set is a bad paint job by the crew or an imitation of a bad paint job by the tenement custodian.

Taut direction and strong acting more effectively enliven the limp script in Home Free. As a brother and sister living in incest, Bob Waldinger and Susan Ehrlich taunt and comfort each other with a vehemence that flickers between sibling rivalry and lovers' passion. The play is too long, but Waldinger, cowering and speaking with a mouth askew, and Erhrlich, alternately imperious and wistful, draw up the yarn into a ball of tension.

The Ex is proving a better showcase for actors than for scripts. Not Enough Rope and Home Free are pedestrian boarders in the Ex's too full house of Tennessee Williams-type agonizing. A sensitive cast and director infuse energy into these invalids--but their talents would be better applied elsewhere.