Despite Expert Direction

Murky Satires Flounder at CWRU

By Peter Bellamy Eldred Theater of Case Western Reserve University is presenting two one-act plays new to Cleveland, directed by Dorothy Silver, the distinguished actressdirector of Karamu Theater. One is "Bringing It All Back Home," by Terrence McNally, who wrote the one-act "Next,” popular on Broadway and on the road.

The other is "The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey," which as written by Slawomir Mrozek, a popular contemporary Polish playwright, is a satire on governmental bureaucracy.

WHILE BOTH these oneact plays are directed with sensitivity and imagination as regards mood, and also well acted, the meaning of

both plays is murky and confused. Both have obvious dull spots.

"Bringing It All Home" is a grim farce-satire about the reactions of a hideously cheap and stupid family at the arrival home of the cof fin of the elder son of the family, who has been killed in Vietnam.

The father is supposedly a "Hardhat" who makes obscene telephone calls. The son is a pimply faced teenager with homosexual tendencies. The daughter is an hysterical slob with a father fixation. The mother is an unthinking, superpatriotic idiot.

THE CORPSE of the boy killed in Vietnam occasion ally shoves up the lid of his coffin to make singularly

unmemorable observations about war and the pain of his fatal wounds.

What the playwright is driving at is never made clear. If he is trying to suggest that those who die in wars or the causes thereof are soon forgotten, he is pointing out the obvious. Locale of the play, for this production, is Bedford Heights. If he is trying to suggest

that all of those who have given their lives in wars have had submoron families, he has written the play in vain.

"The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey" is based on a cute idea which is overcome by boresome lines and allusions, which would appear to be much more germane in Poland than they are in the United States.

The play concerns a Polish worker whose apartment is taken over by the government because his bathroom is believed the lair of a tiger. He is taxed for haboring a tiger and his electric light bulb is removed because he can't pay the tax.

A GOVERNMENT scientist moves into the apartment with elaborate machi-

nery to measure the tiger. A

Russian hunter arrives to relations with an Indian stalk the tiger. To improve state, a maharajah is allowed to hunt the tiger in the bathroom. A circus is allowed to move in, too.

What the play means, aside from its lampoon of governmental red tape, God and the playwright alone know.

Patricia Lee Stotter, as the whip-cracking circus manager, in a colorful sequined dress, has a magnetic stage presence. If Jill Corbin, as the apparently mentally retarded child, is meant to be excruciatingly annoying she succeeds magnficently.

Am Knight, both as the honky-hating TV announcer in "Bringing It All Back Home" and as the prosaic wife who imagines herself an exotic jungle plant in "The Martyrdom of Peter Ohey," also has a professional stage presence.

Miss Silver has obtained every last ounce of emotion out of her cast. Barbara Acker's costumes and John Viars' props, at times, add color.

The two one-act plays will be repeated tonight, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.