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| Lindsay Crouse, Matthew Cowles. |
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.