Friday, June 26, 2020

183. THE FOURSOME. From my (unpublished) ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1970-1975

Lindsay Crouse, Matthew Cowles.
THE FOURSOME [Drama/British/Sex/Youth] A: A.E. Whitehead; D: Jacques Levy; S: Edward Charles Terrel II; C: Bernard Roth; L: Ian Calderon; P: Huttleston Productions i/a/w Jon Pierre; T: Astor Place Theatre (OB); 11/12/73-12/2/73 (24)

E.A. Whitehead’s British play was here adapted to a Galveston, Texas, beach setting, with the language suitably Americanized. (An earlier production at D.C.’s Arena Stage kept the original North England locale.) Practically plotless, it centered on a hot day spent at a deserted beach by a pair of inarticulate young men (Matthew Cowles and Timothy Meyers) and a pair of brainless girls (Lindsay Crouse and Carole Monferdini) they have picked up and brought along for sexual adventure.

Whitehead exposes the narrow psyches of his working-class characters, who emerge as petty, sadistic, masochistic, snide, and pathetic. The men, in particular, are shown as unpleasant chauvinists, but the author also expresses “a distaste for women, amounting to downright queasiness,” according to Edith Oliver.

The transition to Texas was not a smooth one, and did little to help the play. Jacques Levy’s direction, said Clive Barnes, removed the “playfulness” of the original script about “tribal adolescent patterns,” and stressed the “hints of a latent homosexuality” in the boys, along with other themes that did not require so heavy a touch.

Sets, lighting, and acting were all commendable, but could not surmount the misconceived interpretation.