Offensive Duchess

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I have complained that Harvard drama tends to be too conservative. Shows that go up in the Loeb "Experimental" theater are often geared more towards attracting and entertaining crowds than intellectually stimulating them. Performers, directors and audience alike often seem afraid to go out on a limb and venture into the avantgarde.

Last Friday night, I saw one good reason why.

The Duchess of Malfi, currently showing on the Loeb mainstage, is a solid production of an extremely disturbing work. Now, I like to be disturbed--Disability, Escaped, Blue Window and House of Blue Leaves are among the better plays I have seen performed at Harvard--but this went too far.

In the opening scene a man pokes threateningly at a woman's crotch with a knife. In another scene a man straddles a sobbing woman, pinning her to the floor. "You should thank me!" he shouts over and over again as he kisses her violently. A later scene entails a fight between the Duchess and her brother in which the knife is again brought out. First he drags it suggestively in front of her throat. Then he gives it to her explaining that she should kill herself. An argument ensues during which the crying Duchess is held in a choke hold. In the second act one brother locks her up to punish her for essentially remarrying after her husband's death. Meanwhile, the other brother arranges for her to be strangled to death.

Is this display of violence towards women provocative? Yes, it is. It provokes anger, outrage and disgust. It is an image of women as objects of violence and sexual abuse. Is that what what we want to use the mainstage to provoke?

The Harvard mainstage can expose a large number of people to theater which provokes and even disturbs us. And it is one of the few spaces on campus where this type of theater is frequently seen. People who put on productions there have an important opportunity. I am very disappointed that this opportunity, given to only four undergraduate productions a year, was wasted on a show which so explicitly degrades women. Eliza B. Rosenbluth '91