stage/ screen

'Telemachus Clay' Fine Theater

By PETER BELLAMY

The production of the expressionist, unusual drama “Telemachus Clay” at Karamu Arena Theater represents an artistic achievement of the highest order on the part of the cast and director Dorothy Silver.

It is a difficult play to inject with any action for it is presented on a stage bare except for 11 stools on two tiers, on which the actors and actresses sit. However, the performers are in constant movement and through speech and vocal effects give the illusion of constant activity.

They use their voices to imitate the sounds of the surf, locusts, a locomotive or a heart beat. They employ pantomime, as in mixing a drink or wielding a scythe. They plumb the depths of personal degradation and register a feeling of ascendant hippie frenzy.

THE 11 performers enact 99 roles. The manner in which they play them all with total effect is a tribute to director Silver, who has pulled all of the various dramatic aspects of the play together to form a highly theatrical entity.

Playwright Lewis John Carino took the name Telemachus from the Telemachus of Greek legend, who spent along time in a successful

search for his father, Odysseus. The Telemachus of the play, how

ever, is a bastard child from a small town whose quest

for his nameless father ends in tragedy.

An aspiring writer. he is, seduced in Hollywood by a homosexual producer and by the masochistic wife of a scriptwriter. He joins the hippie fringe. Like his father before him, he sires a

bastard son. He is like a doomed figure in a Greek tragedy.

The playwright writes of the beauties of nature with eloquent feeling and of the secret yearnings of the heart with deep compassion. And while life is hard and earnest, there is considerable incidental humor in the play.

Peter Ottrix plays the role of Telemachus with such sensitivity that one almost wants to put a hand on his arm to comfort him. Barbara Billings, as the central figure of a harrowing childbirth scene. all but communicates her birth pangs to the audience.

TEDD BURR, as a hippie religious prophet, has great presence and the finest diction. He needs the latter as he spews out nonstop gibberish at top speed. He leads his followers to babble in tongues as he promises a world with "bubble gum and a sand pail for all.”

Robert Foster fascinates with his screaming, hysterical impersonation of a fag Hollywood director. Earl Billings is reminiscent of the late film mogul Harry Cohn as he loudly demands a director to obtain "Nubian eunuchs with a castrated look-even if they're Mexicans" for a film.

Sarah May is from life as the gum-chewing, vain, wit-

less beauty who makes it as a film sex goddess. Barbara Meisel evokes pity as the somewhat demented. passive mother of Telemachus. One may not in the slightest fault Ciril Robbins, William Bodner, Henry Pickett or Victor Karp in the many contrasting roles.

There is suffering and tragedy, raw sex and a few ugly words. and the nitty

gritty of life in this play. It adds up to memorably exciting theater. Harry 0. Uher's lighting accents the drama's varying moods.