22 JANUARY 1965, Page 18

ARTS & AMUSEMENTS

Exit Left, Enter Right

From ED

BROADWAY comedy this season has been blighted by Race and Goldwater. These were the big issues, the stuff of topical humour—or so the comedy writers had convinced themselves. They were wrong. They are learning fast. Therein lies the change.

Our comic playwrights planted a large crop Of jokes on these subjects, in readiness for the present fall season. But the laughs haven't ripened properly; someone or something kept sneaking into the cornfields at night and cutting them down. Probably the sickle of Father Time. Goldwaterism—that is to say, far-out conser- vatism in general—has been the butt of Broad- way humour for so long that even before the election all resources of mockery were exhausted. Now the election is past, the subject is even deader. The same holds true for civil-rights humour. All the easy swipes at racial bigotry have been taken, at least twice, and no one laughs at the hard swipes. Last year's Blues for Mister Charlie proved that. The dilemma has been brought to focus by a poor response to several topical comedies this year.

There was, for instance, Absence of a Cello, a good, hard-working satire which closed a few days ago. It depended for success upon the audience's feeling of loathing for the big cor- poration 'conformist' type and boundless sym- pathy for unregimented semi-Bohemians. Two acts were devoted to fortifying this sympathy, to bringing out all the absurdness of rampant grey-flannelism. In the third act, with the audi- ence supposedly long-convinced, came the time for the final 'twist'—the electric moment when a playwright shows himself bigger than his audience, when he whirls, puts on his best Shavian smile, begins to hint that a bit of con- formism has its place in the world, that a cor- porate executive can be human after all, can have a fondness for Mozart in off-duty hours, and that even a noble nonconformist can have his absurd side. This broadminded bombshell fell with less impact than intended. The audience had guessed it all along.

Absence of a Cello, none the less, had a decent run of several months. Saul Bellow's more brilliant, more esoteric satire on psychiatry, The Last Analysis, closed quickly. This has been attributed to the usual problem of novelists writing for the stage—too many bright 'literary' ideas packed into mere dialogue, 'wonderful talk, but not drama,' etc. But it may also be due to a change in temper of today's Broadway audiences.

Showbiz is 'progressive-liberal' at heart. So is the Broadway audience, but its liberalism does not stretch to toleratiqg boredom, to laughing at old jokes. Showbiz has done its ordinary best, poked endless easy fun at southern sheriffs, McCarthyite congressmen, the FBI, atomic irre- sponsibility, German scientists, psychoanalysis, and so forth. If audiences no longer laugh heartily at these, what the deuce will they laugh at?

A hint was provided by The Committee, one of those youngish, 'irreverent,' quasi-improvised revues. The first skit was commonplace: guests at a party, civil-rights chitchat, enthusiasm. A Negro guest enters. Everyone stiffens, makes desperate efforts to be friendly, unpatronising, fails completely, of course. The skit drew very few laughs. The audience had seen it all before. But there was a surprise in a later skit: a univer- sity student is being quizzed by a professorial expert on the subject of 'failure' in front of a blackboard listing the names of 'prominent failures' in all fields. 'Show me a political failure,' says the teacher. 'That's easy.' replies the student; 'here's Mayor Wagner [laugh], here's Adlai Stevenson [bigger laugh]."Good. Now show me a social failure. then a personal failure. then a spiritual failure . . .' The expert rattles off a long list of categories. The student pokes among the columns of names. 'Say, here's Adlai Steven- son again, under social. And here you've got him again. Why, he's all over the board.'

'That's right,' crows the expert. '1 consider him to be a sort of Renaissance failure.

Well, it brought the house down. And so it went throughout the evening. The many anti- Goldwater jokes fell flat. The few anti-liberal jokes raised howls of laughter.

This was in early November, by the way, just before the elections. Anti-Goldwater feeling was high. The laughers hadn't switched politics, they were simply delighted by the switch in joke- matter. It had been a long time since one of the so-called irreverent revues had been irreverent about anyone but John Birch, Werner von Braun, Jesus Christ and similar patsies. This audience proved itself quite capable of laughing at its own liberal heroes and ideas, 'at itself,' as showbiz always says, and rarely makes possible.

A single Stevenson joke is no evidence of a 'trend,' but there are other signs. The audience that laughed at Adlai Stevenson laughed out of pure relief, in part, and partly out of the old American keenness for recognising and thwack- ing sacred cows, even when dressed in underdog's clothing, a sport that raised lumps on Washing- ton and Jefferson in their time and on others whom we venerate none the less. Audiences will always be one jump ahead of showbiz in sophistication, especially Broadway audiences. (God help us if we ever are judged by our art!) Yet showbiz is pragmatic, it stumbles along, it will give up its politics sooner than give up its customers. There are signs.

Take the 'drawing-room comedy' genre. In re- cent seasons it had become common for even the fluffiest romances to toss in sermonising asides in favour of social progress whenever the frivolities permitted. Boudoir chatter was per- fumed with cultural advance. Love seats heaved under the weight of crumbling class barriers. - Psychological guilts were dropped along with chemises and trousers. Sexual and spiritual eman- cipation conquered all. These injections of pro- gressive content were meant to elevate matters to a satisfying level of meaningfulness, to mirror the new sophistication of drawing-room society itself and to assuage the audience's supposed guilt at attending empty entertainments.

This is no longer held necessary. Only one romantic comedy has been elevated to meaning- fulness this year, The Owl and the Pussycat, a two-character love story, and this solely for the reason that it is bi-racially cast. The audience is challenged to forget the colour difference of the lovers, to accept the magic of context, the much proclaimed power of theatrical illusion. The producers have bragged of their courage in putting the illusion-theory to such a dollar-and-

cents test. Everyone talks about this bold break- through in casting, argues about whether it sue• ceeds or not in making the viewer forget that the heroine is played by a Negress. Between acts people prowl the lobby, anxiously quizzing each other: 'Does it work?' Can you accept her as white?' (No one asks whether you can accept him as a Negro.)

Does it work? Heaven forbid! There would never be a duller play than The Owl and the Pussycat without that little grit of racial sand in its gears. The constant, tiny crunch creates irrelevant tension in an otherwise listless affair. There are no surprises in the characters. If they had been ordinarily cast, one could not give a hang for them. As it is, one sits in some suspense miserably hoping they will turn out better than they are, for the honour of both races. Gestures, physical contacts. take on an unwarranted sym- bolism (deliberately played up). There is a moment when the girl grovels on her knees in a slave-to-master gesture that is milked for every drop of disclaimed allegory. Horrified, the audi- ence suddenly holds its breath, the illusion- theory is blown to bits and the altruism of the producers is blindingly revealed : far from having risked a good play, they have rescued a bad one and profited nicely on the public's charitable good wishes.

'Progressive humour' seems on its way out. This is no hard thesis, just an observation of straws in the wind. Several present comedies blow neither one way nor the other. The old direction could be resumed by something really good and strong. Maybe this is true of Broad- way's current smash-hit, Luv. I don't know; I couldn't get in. But London can judge, having already seen it.

My guess is that simply for freshness' sake Adlai Stevenson, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Bober and other darlings of the enlightenment are going to get some more thwacks. These won't be deliberate or politically inspired. A couple of years ago a group of wealthy far-righters, growling about a pinko monopoly on humour, tried to underwrite a monstrosity called The Conservative Revue (using suborned pinko comedians to grind out material). Naturally, the attempt was disastrous, never got beyond the artificial-insemination tank. Served the money boys right for trying; illiberal laughter can't be bought. Time, nature and showbiz have to come to it gradually. The boys could have saved their money and just waited.