Student Struggles

IT'S 1966 IN an American university town. Eight students share a poster-lined apartment; they worry about Vietnam, joke about sex, and make fun of their professors. As one character in Michael Weller's Moonchildren puts it. "You can't get more relevant."

But Moonchildren tries to take on too much--anti-war demonstrations, the "generation gap," cohabitation: Weller can't organize the bits and pieces of these students' lives into a coherent whole. His play's major flaw is the schism between the student world and the adult world; an assortment of "real" people enter and exit, but their collective intrusion is distracting rather than dramatic.

Director Sam Guckenheimer has wisely cut out much of the deadwood. By disposing of four characters, an entire scene, and a sizeable 15 per cent of the script, he has tried to focus this theatrical hodge-podge. The result is a lighter, less political play than the original that zeroes in on the emotional interaction between the students.

THE SCRIPT IS full of comic routines and caustic one-liners. Humor is the basis of the characters' lives, providing them with accurate insight and comfortable escape. Norman, the straight mathematician, and Shelley, his spacey girlfriend, are clearly self-parodies. Mike and Cootie, a Rosenkrantz-and-Guildenstern type duo, are careful, conscious performers. But other characters are confused about the interpretation of their lines. When Kathy has problems with her boyfriend, she complains:

He's like, reaching out, trying to relate to me on a personal level by rejecting me, but, like, I don't know how to break through...I don't know. You think you're really relating like crazy and then, suddenly, it's a whole new scene.

This sort of vapid speech demands to be performed as parody. Yet Guckenheimer has not delineated the humorous moments from the serious ones. The characters flounder in search of a voice; some scenes lack dramatic viewpoint to the verge of soap-opera tedium.

The smaller-scale direction, especially blocking, is excellent. Smooth timing and imaginative use of props stretch the humor--this particular facet of Weller's play becomes the mainstay of the Dunster production. David Alpert gives a skillful and sophisticated performance as the roguish Mike who masterminds the comic scenes. His sidekick, played by Andy Berger, is a lackluster second fiddle. Andrea Gordon as Ruth and Nikki Mintz as Kathy speak their lines self-consciously, sounding unnatural saying "fuck" and "shit"; it's as though the Jackson twins have bedded down with the entire high school football team.

ROGER O'BRIEN is miscast as Dick, the would-be stud who steals Kathy away from Bob. He should be a visual foil to Bob--both bigger and better looking, but though O'Brien speaks and moves smoothly, he doesn't have the physical presence to do justice to the part. In contrast, Tony Horowitz as Norman and Diane Sherlock as Shelley are marvelously convincing caricatures. Ethan Dmitrovsky plays Willis the landlord Archie Bunker-style; his dream monologue is the most haunting moment of the play.

David Moore is outstanding as Bob, the only fully developed character in the play. Moore's sensitivity to the interaction of his seven apartment-mates ties the production together, saving it from the shallow script. His fond acceptance of their emotional flaws become our own, and we begin to tolerate their dramatic flaws as well.

The characters of Moonchildren are like a lot of people here--they offer no illuminating truths about the nature of existence. But they can be very, very funny, and sometimes that's enough.