Word: autumns
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...sadly perplexed crowd that walked out after the Poets' Theatre performance of Lyon Phelps' three-act verse drama "Autumn" last Monday night. We had gone prepared to wrestle with obscurities and be buffeted by lines of lofty poetic significance, but Mr. Phelps had imposed on us too much. If we had grasped the deep meaning of every symbol and responded fully to every profound line in his play we would have been left limp from catharsis, unable to leave the theatre. As it was we walked out, perplexed...
...Autumn" is the story of the return of a Prodigal Son to his New England home. (I capitalize the words because Mr. Phelps does not skimp on Biblical analogy. His play is not so much about a New England family as about a group of symbols and ideas which happen to be residing in the bodies of a New England family; his characters never speak for themselves, their earthly selves, but always for their symbolic selves, and for the author.) The son returns and stirs up the maelstrom of hatred and misunderstanding which is basic in his family. His eldest...
...doesn't find this out until the end of the play, however. For two acts "Autumn" does seem like a play about a New England family. There are plenty of symbolic overtones, to be sure, but one can grasp what is going on and be interested in the characters for themselves. Monday night, during the first two sets, one's spirits rose and one could tell oneself that this modern poetic drama wasn't so stiff after...
...trouble with "Autumn" is that it tries to say much too much and strives too hard to be significant. Every third line sounds as if it were the key to the whole play. To give all these lines their due importance, the actors were obliged to maintain a lofty and serious tone throughout. The play rolled on, inexorably significant, unbroken by so much as one shaft of humor...
Considered as theatre, "Autumn" does not rate very high. As poetry, however, it does much better. Mr. Phelps, I think, has mastered the difficulty of expressing conversation in poetry (if anything so doggedly exalted could be called "conversation"). His lines flow smoothly and naturally, and have real beauty at times. One need only read aloud a line like this: "Mother, mother, who is, what is, where is, God?" to realize that Phelps can write very forceful poetic speech. In fact the effective verse of the play almost compensates for the ponderous structure of its ideas...