Critic

at large

'Dark' glows with top cast

By Peter Bellamy

With its production of "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," the Play House Euclid-77th Theater has a perfectly splendid example of ensemble acting.

Indeed, it might be one of the finest examples of ensemble acting since the Drury Theater's celebrated production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night” in 1962.

William Inge wrote other plays such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Picnic" and "Come Back, Little Sheba," but "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" is probably his best.

The play commands one's interest from start to finish, and its highly emotional content is accentuated by a uniformly excellent cast under the strong direction of Larry Tarrant.

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The play is more than just a study of a family in an Oklahoma town in the early '20s. It also treats of the vicious anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism which were rife in towns of the nation's Bible Belt and Midwest at the time.

It is absurd to the point of laughter to hear one of the play's characters state with utmost conviction that the basements of Catholic churches were stuffed with machine guns for the day the Pope would try to take over the world.

The fact is that there were thousands of people during the '20s who thought that such utter nonsense was gospel truth. Moreover, antiSemitism was a very cruel and very real thing in those days.

All of Inge's plays were autobiographical and, "Dark at the Top of the Stairs" is no exception. The character of the play's little boy who has been spoiled and babied by his mother to the point where he is an insufferable little brat may be based on Inge's childhood.

Inge, of course, was a talented, tragically maladjusted homosexual who finally committed suicide, apparently convinced that his powers of creativity had been exhausted. He, too, had to contend with a spiritual "Dark at the Top of the Stairs."

The two main characters of the play are a husband and wife totally unsuited to each other temperamentally, but-bound together by an irresistible sexual attraction. They can't live happily with and they can't live without each other.

A big, extroverted, handsome super stud, he is chronically unfaithful. The wife, predictably, is a whiner, and a nagger. Their over-protected son and his older sister have a sibling rivalry which amounts to hatred.

One of the emotional crises has to do with whether the husband.will return to the wife he has left. The other involves the reluctant daughter's party date with a Jewish boy.

There is offstage violence to point up the heart-breaking consequences of anti-Semitism.

Ken Albers as the errant husband has a Justy, virile quality reminiscent of Robert Preston. Lizbeth Mackay is the very picture of a completely disorganized neurotic as the wife.

Evie McElroy is both hilarious and touching as the wife's salty sister who says she never wanted children, but whose secret sorrow is that she never could: have any. Allen Leatherman underplays the role of her doormat husband magnificently.

Sharon Bicknell is also extremely funny and moving as the giggling, gushing teen-aged flapper aptly nicknamed "Flirt." She adds up to the '20s definition of "hot stuff."

Tony Phelan, who alternates in the role with Kenneth Dolin, plays the part of the son with admirably irksome, hysterical temper tantrums.

James Richards inspires pity as the Continued on Page 10