A Look at Academic Frustration

BEN BUTLEY is cast out of a familiar mold. An obnoxious ass of an academic, he freely assaults our sympathies and yet, at the same time, manages to force his grasp upon them. He's ready to insult anyone and everyone who wanders into his cramped little office; he's always willing to play the irritating fool; he struts and scorns in a bald exhibition of inflated ego and pomposity--but, "in point of fact," he's so annoyingly good at it that he can't help but win the appreciation, if not the admiration, of the audience--his audience.

For Butley, of course, is a one-man show. That a day in the life of a lecturer at the University of London should be so successfully transformed into theater is not too surprising--like all good academic comedians. Butley is a showman, a constant performer, whose glory on the tenured stage lies in the absence of competition. Butley demands all for himself and when at the end of the play he has driven away all the other characters, including his wife and his young protege, only the audience is left to sustain him. In the course of a single day his life has practically fallen apart, but we cannot let him go.

What holds Butley together is its humor. The play is consistently funny. The laughs are disarming; this should be a sad if not pathetic story. But Butley himself could never allow that--he's too cynical, too intelligent, to allow sentiment to creep in. It is only after the final well deserved curtain call that depression begins to take hold, begins to work its way through the memories of the evening, until it seems to have consumed not just the collapse, but the entire story of Ben Butley.

The Dunster Drama Society has put on an excellent production. And in large part, of course, that means David Eisenberg's performance in the title role. His portrayal of Butley is sharp, witty, and comprehensive. In all of Butley's little games and postures, a deeper understanding is thrust upon us. He might have been simply a ridiculous fool or a petty tyrant, but Eisenberg brings to bear an added dimension and coloring that display again and again his full human character.

FORTUNATELY FOR Eisenberg, Jeremy Gordon as the disillusioned disciple, Joey, presents an equally accomplished performance. Joey was at one time one of Butley's students; now, he is an assistant lecturer worried about his promotion who shares who both office and apartment with his mentor. He is also a homosexual. Watching these two English scholars as they struggle their way through their forensic and clearly intimate friendship is a delight. Early in the first act, Ben badgers Joey with questions about his new found friend, Reg, a brawny football and cooking enthusiast from Leeds, commenting. "My natural force plays excitingly with your natural submissiveness." But running beneath the wisecracks and put-downs is a strong undercurrent of jealousy, that grows stronger as the play progresses. When Reg finally appears. Ben admits to him that, "metaphorically," at least, he and Joey are married. But Reg resolutely refuses to surrender the stage, and when he leaves, it is clear that Joey is no longer Ben's. The outsider easily punctures the academic conceit. Michael Martorano's Reg, it must be added, is yet another strong and faultless performance.

Butley takes place entirely with in the small and crowded office of Ben and Joey. In an exhibition of dexterity that nearly matches that of their word-play, the two lecturers manage to avoid with a graceful and familiar ease the various chairs, desks, book cases, and lamp cords that clutter the stage. Director John Greenwood has taken his actors and put them in a confining (and potentially dangerous) set, that serves only to accentuate the petty and bitter world of Ben Butley's academia. The direction is totally unobtrusive--which is exactly as it should be in a small and personal play of this sort. Credit must also be given to the supporting cast of Nicole Francois, Christina Keefe, Lorna Koski, Ray Pierre-Humbert, and Bob Morgan.

Author Simon Gray has produced a story that can't fall far from home. As we watch Ben Butley lose both his wife and his best friend in a single day, it becomes clear that he is a brilliant, captivating man who has failed his promise. At the end of the play, he turns to Joey, reminds him of their past creative relations, to which Joey replies. "I know. But those were in the days when you still taught. Now you spread futility, Ben." And Butley's importance lies, ultimately, in its subtle ability to lend an understanding of this perhaps too familiar academic frustration and surrender, a sympathetic view of the suicide of the mind.