Tufts Arena Theatre
As in previous summers the Tufts Arena Theatre provided an opportunity for student apprentices to acquire or improve their basic acting technique. Some years the group has had one or two truly outstanding talents; this summer there was none, but a few did show more than average aptitude, notably Karen Johnson, Alvin Cohen, and Helen Kelly.
The directors usually make up for the lack of performing skill by choosing off-beat plays; and this summer was no exception. The company kicked off with Goodrich & Hackett's The Great Big Doorstep, and followed it with two of Eugene Ionesco's avant-garde one-acters: The Lesson; and Jack, or the Submission. Neither of the last two is in a class with Ionesco's The Chairs; but both are intriguing if too drawn out dramatizations of his thesis that people just cannot communicate sufficiently through language. Jack was more imaginatively staged here than the New York production last year.
The revival of Alison's House, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Susan Glaspell in 1931, showed us some writing that could not get by in the theatre today; but the story, based on the mysterious life of poetess Emily Dickinson, is inherently dramatic and playworthy. A woman also wrote the group's next offering, The Chalk Garden. Enid Bagnold's play about two interlocking struggles is a good deal better than Miss Glaspell's.
A major event was the American premier of The Burnt Flower-Bed, written in 1952 by the late Italian dramatist Ugo Betti. Betti has been hailed as a greater playwright than Pirandello; he is certainly not that, but he does deserve a place among the most important modern writers for the theatre. This play deals with the problem of present-day nihilism and international political diplomacy. If it did not lapse periodically into propagandistic sermonizing, it would be a masterpiece.
As a tribute to the late Ethel Barry-more, the Tufts Theatre concluded the season with The Royal Family. George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber wrote this play 32 years ago as an affectionate spoof of the whole Barrymore family in the Twenties when it was the reigning theatrical dynasty.
Kaufman, this time in collaboration with Moss Hart, also wrote The Man Who Came to Dinner, which the Harvard Summer Theatre Group chose to put on in the Union Common Room. Resourcefully directed by Julius L. Novick '60 under difficult conditions, this witty satire about the notorious Alexander Woollcott emerged as a highly entertaining production. Mikel Lambert '59, as Maggie, gave the most consistently fine performance--poised, polished, and sensitive. Other good work came from Earle Edgerton '56 (in the title role), Richard Dozier '60, Marguerite Tarrant '59, John Wolfson '60, and Erich Segal '58.
At Kresge Auditorium, the M.I.T. Summer School sponsored Barry Morse in Merely Players, a "one-man theatrical scrapbook." Morse described his show as "a light-hearted look at the actor and his life, his ups and downs, troubles and triumphs--in fact and fiction, in various periods and places." Knowledgeable chatting alternated with solo excerpts.