Stage: 'Butley' is finely honed

By Bill Doll

Main Dealer Theater Critic

Theater in Cleveland often seems like a car that runs well enough, but is sorely in need of a good polishing. It works, but it ain't got no sparkle.

Now, Cleveland State University's "Butley," which opened last Wednesday at the Factory Theater on the campus, isn't your basic Simonized Rolls Royce, but it does have an uncommon shine.

"Butley" shows us the best work in quite some time from two of the more prominent members of the local theater community, David O. Frazier, who plays the title role, and Joseph J. Garry Jr., who directs.

“Butley,” which isn't truly a college production since only one of the cast is a student and Frazier is a professional, is two hours of undiluted, un-Maaloxed bile and misery. Entertaining, coniplex, theatrically pounding, but bile and misery all the same.

The source is Butley, who spews them out between the recital of snatches from children's rhymes. He is an English professor at a British university whom we meet on the day his wife divorces him and his homosexual lover abandons him.

His lover, Joey, has returned home late from a weekend away. Butley, jealous and frightened, attacks. He is abusive; he is rational; he is seductive, he is castrating.

David Frazier has the face for a Butley, like a jack-o-lantern which has been smashed, but continues to grimace and grin. It is a face on which the contortions inside the man play themselves.out.

Richard Worswick, as Joey, does a fine, calm job as the slight, hounded counterweight to Butley's monsoon. Mark Cipra, as Joey's new lover, drawn into a vicious verbal chess match with Butley, is cool, controlled, and almost invincible.

B

Diana Slobodian, Katherine Wasil, Marion Murray and Allan Byrne do justice to more minor roles.

The direction, by Garry, has a more than usual sensitivity and understanding of relationships.

The production is not, by any stretch, a tourde-force (there are times when we had to reach too much to grasp the emotion behind Frazier's words and gestures). But it has a polish to it.

The only true regret is that "Butley" will only be playing Wednesday through next Sunday.