Deborah and Deviation

The same thing probably happened in your town. The morning after Deborah Kerr's new play opened, the most sensational sheets in Los Angeles blatted wildly the news that it was about that nasty old taboo, homosexuality. The more conservative ones dealt firmly with her performance and the rest refused to admit anything had opened last night at all. Their silence was thunderous. Consternation reigned.

It also reigned among those who saw the play, we must presume after reading a review. "Tea and Sympathy" by Robert Anderson might well bring the same wince as a play that those three words do as a title. It must be immediately conceded that the playwright's handling of the subject is of prime importance and that any plot, however excellent, can be reduced to ruins by a resume. Recite the plot of Hamlet and you'll both begin to wonder how it ever got produced.

Nevertheless, we'd like very much to know the details of a plot which runs as follows. The boy, like all sensitive boys in plays, is seventeen and boards in one of those pits of perversion, a New England boys' school, where there is more than enough gloom to go around and sex is looked upon as an unfortunate weakness. Perhaps this school is bright and cheery but the story belongs in a room with no windows. The headmaster's wife discovers that he is a frustrated homosexual and that the boy is worried about being one himself. She very wisely parts from her tainted husband (even being frustrated is too much) and, in a gesture of panoramic self-sacrifice, seduces the adolescent "to make a man of him." She is successful. Noble gal: bet it was a terrible experience for her. It must have escaped her that if one seduction makes a man of a boy then years of living, with one's husband should logically make a superman of a man. From this newspaper sketch it is evident that the play is based upon the actually primitive assumption that you either are or you aren't. In spite of Kinsey's documented hypothesis of degree, in spite of logic, reason and humanity, you simply are or you aren't.

But what is almost as piquing is the evident self-satisfaction of all concerned with the production. They've been real sophisticates for dealing with such a nasty subject without using a single four-letter word. They've been "tolerant" and begged their enlightened audiences to look on this "abnormality" as not evil but illness. Oh, joy. Dandruff by any other name is still dandruff, and these "ill" persons are truly sick of being confronted with a patience that is as inaccurate as prejudice. To say that whites should not force themselves upon Negroes is merely a "civilized" way of saying Negroes should be kept in their place.

Aiding Miss Kerr to serve her sympathetic tea is Leif Erickson and John Kerr. Elia Kazan directed.

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Minnie Peru

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