Nazi menace drama still grips

By R. Woodward The Cleveland Play House production of Lillian Hellman's 1941 play Watch on the Rhine (playing through November 23) shows that it is still a dramatic work that nobody sleeps through.

Hellman has never produced any flights of mad poetic fantasy. Her intelligence has always seemed to be of the coldly calculating kind. At her best, however, she is extremely sharp-eyed and provides a very exciting show by hitting her targets right on center from several different angles.

In Watch on the Rhine her steely eyed. Annie Oakley approach to art is at its most adroitly controlled. Several different colorful characters are kept within the bounds of human credibility, and their actions and conversations are so skillfully arranged that for three hours the audience watches everything intently, convinced that almost anything might turn out to be important for resolving the conflicts and the issues involved.

and important by Hellman's relly, the family matriarch, plays efforts in writing it to deglamorize the Nazis.

In 1941 Hellman was pointing out a basic fact about dealing with Hitler's regime that all too many writers then and since have not bothered to consider: To regard the Nazis as being incomprehensible demonic beings is to partly accept them at their own valuation and be all the more susceptable to their influence

Nazi evil consists of concentrations, twists, and grotesque magnifications of some of the most ordinary human vulgarities and banalities. Acting inhuman does not make people superhuman.

The type of banality that Nazi manipulators regularly make use of is typified by Brancovis. depicted by Hellman as being an unimpressive small time chiseler.

Opposing the fascist theat does not require superhuman abilities. What it does require is for people to stop making excuses, excuses that anyone in any situation whatever can find. for not getting involved.

Set in the spring of 1940 in a well-to-do (and self-satisfied) At the beginning of Act III, suburb outside of Washington. Muller tells of raiding the home of D.C., the play deals with Fanny the head of the Gestapo chief in Farrelly, an aged widow welcomKonstanz one night with the help ing into her home her middle of one friend and two aged pisaged married daughter, her ! tols, and being over the Swiss daughter's German husband, border a few hours later, and his and three grandchildren.

Kurt Muller, the husband, is, it turns out, a leading anti-fascist.

A house guest of Fanny's. a Rumanian refugee count named Brancovis, is eager to return to Europe and figures he might be able to do so if he would do a favor for the Nazis at the Germany embassy in Washington, D.C. by letting them know where

Muller is.

As an idea drama, Watch on the Rhine has been kept fresh

assistant eating his breakfast three blocks from where the raid took place. The point of the story is not that he and his friend are remarkable, but that those who are Nazis are not any more invulnerable and all seeing than anybody else.

House production acts with conviction, doing effective jobs of keeping the recognizable types in the play from ever seeming to be merely stock characters. Katharine Squire as Fanny Far-

Playwright Robert Patrick and director William Compton lead a discussion on "Kennedy's Children" after a performance at the University of Akron.

Patrick in print

By Daniel Curzon

(It's still not that acceptable, in case you haven't noticed)

(IGNA) How great to have No doubt Patrick, like any gay more of Robert Patrick's plays in print. No playwright deserves it writer, has suffered from homomore, for he is no less than the phobia and that's held down his rightful heir of Tennessee Willireputation. It's all right, you see. ams and Edward Albee. I mean to write about people -as long he is every bit as talented as as the people happen to be heteeither. In fact, even more than rosexuals. Direct your talent to they, he can be moving and witty depicting gays as main characat the same time, and yet Patrick ters right along with others and is completely open about his you're somehow not "universal" homosexuality and always has anymore. been, even in the mid-sixties when it was dangerous to be so

But Robert Patrick is a serious (Continued on Next Page)

with subtlety and control, avoiding any temptation from the script to make the character either too cutesy or too obviously overbearing. Squire gets across that Fanny controls people through intelligence and humor. not bullying.

Particularly well handled is the relationship between Fanny and her grown son David, played by Joe D. Lauck. Lauck's brisk playing keeps David, who is still unmarried and still living in the family home at the age of 39. from being your stock weak, wimpy son. Verbal fencing and playful put-downs between the mother and son come off as being genuinely good humored exchanges between two adults who are civilized, self-respecting and without malice.

As Muller, Kenneth Albers plays in a quiet, subdued manner, achieving some espe cially moving moments in showing Muller sharing emotional moments with his wife and children.

Having to wrestle with a foreign accent keeps Albers out of a certain type of thespic mischief. Albers is obviously someone with a great deal of stage experience and he is very much a pro.

(Notice, for example, the finesse Muller to the Nazis, Richard Halwith which he plays his scenes 'verson effectively realizes Helwith the youngster who plays Iman's intention of keeping the Muller's nine year old son). But at character from being any larger times in past roles a certain than life villain. Avoiding all. exuberance of his has gotten the exaggeration, making the charupper hand, and at times he has acter's petty, disreputable tended to radiate more self assumotives and actions clear and rance than has been entirely believable, even at their most consistent with the confusions contemptible, Halverson makes and perplexities of characters he the character credible enough to has been playing. be almost embarrassing.

Just a touch uneasy in conveying the speaking patterns of Muller, Albers is obliged to be a bit more modest and somewhat more ploddingly methodical than usual in his playing. The loss of a certain perfection in his technique is accompanied by a great gain in emotional re-

sonance.

As Sarah, Fanny's strong willed daughter and Muller's supportive wife, Carolyn Reed easily gets across the strength and intelligence needed to convince the audience that Sarah passionately shares her husband's aims and ideas. Sarah spends the whole play reacting to actions initiated by others, and Reed's acting easily overcomes the problem of keeping the character from seeming passive.

As Teck de Brancovis, the foreign count who tries to betray

"Kennedy's Children"

(Continued from Previous Page) bartender had no speaking lines. For this production, Patrick gave him his own personality and monologue.

Jason is about 20 years old, too

young to remember Camelot He

was influenced by a later time. when right and wrong changed capriciously.

He doesn't mourn for lost Ideals or heroes he never had any to lose.

The actors in this production. all college students, showed surprising depth for their young age.

Sarah Lorenz as Wanda, Frank Jackman as Mark, and Robert Behrens as Jason gave fine performances

Sheila Kelly gave an energetic

and convincing performance of Rona, the burned-out activist

Robert Ulm skillfully portrayed Sparger, the gay actor, as a flamboyant artiste rather than a homosexual cliche

Pamela D Langston handled the sensuous gymnastics of Carla with finese as she delivered her scathing lines

The other actors with small supporting roles were all good.

Following the performance. Robert Patrick, who was in from New York, and the director ans wered questions from the audience.

Patrick explained that he began writing Kennedy's Children in 1968 as that infamous decade came to a close. He saw people he had once known as hopeful and productive. becoming stagnant and cynical. He wanted to commemorate these people in a play.

In. 1970, his play A Bad Place

To Get Your Head opened to fair reviews. The characters were Mark, the Viet Nam veteran, and his mother

The character of Mark was carried over to Kennedy's Children, which first opened Off-Broadway at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in 1973. It was not reviewed by the critics so nothing much happened with it

The play then went to London where it was a great success. It played in many places in Europe and opened on Broadway in 1975 to rave reviews.

It continues to be one of the most popular productions of local theatre groups

は

ignityleveland

beautiful American born wife Playing Marthe, Brancovis's who was forced by her mother into a loveless marriage with Brancovis for the prestige of being married to a count, Sharon Bicknell gets across the character's emotions convincingly and gives a characterization that is consistent and plausible. On opening night, however, she was playing a lite bit too loudly and broadly in relation to the other acting in the play. Bicknell has always seemed to be a sensitive player in the past, and she definitely has found the character. One suspects that helping her to adjust her performance was simply something that the director overlooked or was unable to find time for in the midst of the hassles of getting ready for opening night à long and complicated show.

The Muller children aged teens, 12, and nine, are so wellbehaved, virtuous, and highminded that it is not hard for them to seem insufferable, but with this production audiences have lucked out. Allan Byrne who plays Joshua, the oldest, and Judy Nevits who plays his 12 year old sister are young looking players in their early twenties. disciplined and well trained, who can get across direct, naive intelligence without heavy handedness. Benjamin Sander (according to the program notes in the sixth grade) in playing Bodo, the youngest child, shows himself to be a modest, conscientious player. He plays his spectacled, precocious character with no noticeable self consciousness at audiences finding the character amusing..

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Catholic gay men, Lesbians & their friends. For more information: P.Q. Box. 18479, Cleveland, OH 44118 (216) 791-0942 + 321-9456

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