accusation, which is quite another thing. And always, if in the inverted characters concerned, there is any departure from "honest masculinity,' then a little heterosexual adultery seems to cure everything.

GAME OF FOOLS could have

•

was unsubstantiated by actual evidence at that particular time, What would you do? Might you not try to buy your way out, or use influence to the same effect? In court, would you deny everything? Or would you admit being homosexual while deny-

you perhaps claim that your friends had debauched you, that you were too drunk to know what was happening, or that you had resisted their improper advances? Or would you confess abjectly (or brazenly) to everything charged?

been in the knee-bending class; anding the specific acts charged? Would { in this class it could have been; produced. Mr. Barr had his chance at Broadway, but at what expense? "Pretty it up a bit." "Don't have the boys real homosexuals, just victims of false charges." "And for God's sake, DON'T SAY ANYTHING at least nothing that isn't safely commonplace-just something nice, and liberal to make the critics feel good."

Some readers may feel Mr. Barr would have done better to take Broadway on its own terms, to get a foot in the door and get his message in later-maybe. But he considered his play worth its message and passed up the big chance. Thus we are spared more "COFFEE AND CONDOLENCES." One can only wish for more independence of this brand, particularly among homosexual writers today.

Unproduced plays, even very good ones, are not rare. Sean O'Casey, whom many critics consider the greatest living playwright, has seldom been produced, largely because as an Irishman he avoids variations on the Mother Machree) theme. Producers, of course, are business men who are required to make money, and must therefore abide by the most esoteric calculations of their private Ouija boards before accepting a play as a safe investment. Who expects them to be overly impressed with the mere fact a play is honest?

This is the situation in which James Barr has placed his four young protagonists. The play follows the youths through their arrest, incarceration and their subsequent tortured attempts to find themselves. To a very considerable degree, as it actually must with each of us, too often more than we can honestly know, the nature of their individual reactions hinges on their social and religious backgrounds. All four are from wealthy families, and generally seem to be Only Sons. They and their families have lived in adjoining flats of an apartment house. The play is so written that much of the action occurs simultaneously in the living quarters of each of the four families, giving us a rare opportunity for immediate comparison and high contrast. Here the, interplay has been handled with a master's conception and touch.

Johnnie Babton, as refreshingly liberal as any character you're likely to meet in homosexual fiction, Unj tarian, son of a manufacturer, bás grown up in a tolerant, self-confident atmosphere. Jasher Pureson, on the other hand, a brilliant but painfully : shy boy is the son of a domineering bigot, a publisher of Revivalist tracts. Francois English, least defined but most likeable of the four,

.The plot of the play is simple, and timely. Suppose you had gathered for dinner with a few close friends when the police broke in, charging you with Sodomy-though the charge Episcopalian, is a banker's son. And

mattachine REVIEW

Paddy O'Reiley, edgey and potentially alcoholic, son of a reform candidate for mayor, is dominated by a psychotic mother who has vowed to give a son to, the Church.

Add a background of rough and realistic politics in a small city, and a carefully stylized manner of presentation which treats the characters more as types than as individuals, and we have a moving drama, heavily symbolic, that many will inevitably describe as Kafka-like.

If the reviewer cannot comment on the staging which this play, unfortunately, has not had, he can àt least touch. briefly on the kind it demands. The Plains House, which houses these four very different familles, is the strongest suggested set. A certain slight, but elegant, design, in lieu of actual furnishing, can be made to suggest the mode of living of each of the families in the severest modern sense. The other sets, a lake cabin, a court room, a prison gate and a hotel suite, likewise require— except perhaps in the last instance an austere but imposing use of sparse furnishings; furnishings which should. be fantastically suggestive, rather than, naturalistic. And in this sort of play, one feels that the lighting should be always predominated by the shadows.

The characters and the dramatic situation are expertly handled, and the whole moves to a powerful and convincing climax-a climax that

WHEN

the reader, will find more than welcome after the miserably unconvincing endings that have been tacked on (generally by publishers) to almost all homosexual novels.

For the theatre goer (if he someday gets the chance) or for the feader, GAME OF FOOLS is the first fully convincing and intellectually acceptable American work on this subject. And particularly for the reader, since it is to the reader that this work now. goes, it is an excellent and very necessary story, beautifully told.

As a precedent, this first affirmative play on the homosexual theme to appear in this country-and the

first book. published in America by an, organization as significant as ONE-would be very important, even if it were not an excellent play and

quite as readable as a novel. But the book is able to stand on its own inner merits. It is a story one will not soon forget.

GAME OF FOOLS is the first of a series of five projected plays by Mr. Barr on' various aspects of the theme. The second has just been completed. it is this reviewer's opinion that well It before the series is done, its author, whether or not he and Broadway come to an agreement on how much of a message is expedient, will be known as one of America's most promising playwrights,

Already he has laid a good, solid claim to the distinction.

HEN YOU DEPLORE the condition of the world, ask yourself, "Am I part of the problem or part of the solution?"--Murray D. Lincoln.