Theatre
Schisgal Kebab
By BAMBER GASCOIGNE
Ducks and Lovers. (Arts.)— Our Little Life. (Pembroke, Croydon.) 'Oa Dad, poor Dad, Mamma's popped you in the casserole and I'm feeling so sad.' This could have been the reaction of the hero at one point dur- ing Ducks and Lovers, and it serves also to place Murray Schisgal's play alongside Arthur Kopit's recent Oh Dad, Poor Dad, etc. in the school of New American Weird. These plays are more con- sequential than N. F. Simpson, but more arbitrary and frivolous than the best of Ionesco.
The reason why Schisgal's Mamma can cook Dad without bothering the police is that he happens, at the moment. to be a duck. The son has broken away from his gipsy background and has become an advertising man (`I have a big future'). He rejects the idea of transmigration and grows peevish when Mamma, thrusting the docile quacker at him, tells him that his father wants to give him a serious talking to. Never- theless his rational soul rebels when he is con- fronted with a plate of duck soup at his own wedding feast. Superstitious Mamma, confident perhaps that a good duck is bound to return in some slightly more companionable form, finds the meal quite normal.
Schisgal strikes plenty of sparks from his ex- cellent central idea. The ideals of the ambitious Young copy-writer sound magnificently ludi- crous when proudly presented to his gipsy family. His relations obstinately give him their full sYmpathy and remind him that the family is always willing to help. The most colourful of them all is the grandmother, the Queen of the Gipsies, an obese matriarch who discusses the existentialist philosophers as though they were firms of solicitors. Her dying breath complicates her grandson's life still further by proclaiming him the next King. He now comes up against a superb theatrical version of the family's auto- matic refusal to listen to any opposing argu- ments. His three uncles operate as a team. They bear down on him in single file—Theo in front, behind him Silvero, behind him Carmine. Theo is the spokesman. Any objection that is put to him is passed back down the line of uncles, sub- jected to a garbling process and thus disposed of. So Theo (and I quote only approximately) says to his nephew: 'Now, come on. Robert! Will you be King?'
ROBERT: NO. And don't ask me again. THEO (over his shoulder): What does he say? SILvERO (over his shoulder): What does he say?
CARMINE: He says he's in pain.
SILVERO: It's going to rain.
TitEo: We'll take the tube. Now, Robert; will you be King?
Robert is in love with the boss's daughter; this takes the play into a smart bourgeois home, where it fares rather less well. Schisgal falls back on some rather tired expressionistic tricks and later, in the advertising agency's office, produces fairly obvious satire on jingle-writing. But there is one splendid meeting between the two families. The gipsies troop in to announce that Robert has been named King of the Gipsies. The boss and his lady-wife, instead of being scandalised, react to the magic word 'king' and fall down on their knees. For the first time they seriously con- sider Robert as a possible son-in-law.
The cast is good, and the play is well directed by Philip Saville—yet another director who is now working both on television and in the theatre. In spite of its weaknesses Ducks and Lovers makes an entertaining evening. We will hear more of Schisgal and Kopit—two names, come to think of it, which might well be charac- ters in their own plays.
Someone, somehow, has enticed .Margaret Rutherford down to Croydon to appear ,in :an extremely feeble sextuple bill. There are tWo very slight divertissements by Molnar and de 14tigset. There are two terrible monologues, by Chekhov and Henry James. Monologues are the very last type of theatre which should be atterripted,on an arena stage, since at any given moment -there is a quarter of the audience with nothing to look at but the rear view of the entire cast. Realising this, the anxious monologuist usually launches nervously into a slowly accelerating pirouette. Then there is a worthy play about human values triumphing in a camp for Ruritanian refugees, complete with the services of a huge canned orchestra to drench the finale in our tears.
The only play in the bill which could have been interesting is Strindberg's The Stronger, a meeting between a neurotic wife and her hus- band's coldly silent mistress. It should be possible at the end of the play to argue which of them is the stronger, but Basil Ashmore has carefully directed it so as to dispel any subtlety, under- lining his interpretation with heavy expression- istic lighting effects. It is typical of the whole evening that he has even changed the title to .M14y Darling Mildred.
Hugh Ross Williamson's convent romp, Teresa of A vila, has arrived in London from Dublin. When I last wrote about the play I was unaware that the song of the flea was Saint Teresa's own, and I stand corrected by a letter from Mr. Williamson. But in the theatre the mood is even more important than the facts. Gandhi may have drunk many cups of tea, but that didn't make his life one long tea-party.
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