Word: balch
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...director of the Tufts University Theatre, Marston Balch, emphasized the "desperate need to help playwrights." College drama makes a particular contribution by trying out new plays, for only with staging can a writer gain experience...
...elaborate posturing; sporadic and phoney attempts at the proper accents; cliche characterizations; apple-cheeked students looking highly uncomfortable under assumed grey hair. The casting seems to have been done on the eenie-meenie-miney-mo system, but in spite of this and other mis- and malfeasances, the director, Marston Balch, is more to be pitied than censured. Whatever may have been his conception of the play, this motley crew is incapable of rendering it. Some, of course, are better than others, but only Frederick Blais, as an affable but reverend bishop, is anything more than tolerable...
...tribute to the late Ethel Barrymore, director Marston Balch and the company of the Tufts Arena Theatre have revived The Royal Family. And with this early (1927) George S. Kaufman-Edna Ferber comedy, these industrious young student-performers conclude their 1959 summer season, by taking us back to the Roaring Twenties when the Barrymores were the reigning theatrical dynasty...
Working with a cast of varied ability, director Balch has staged a lively, amusing production, utilizing the arena stage with ease. Frederick Blais, as Oscar Wolfe, the devoted manager of the Cavendish clan, is just about perfect. Sporting an hillarious Viennese accent, impressive gestures, and clean decisive movement, he turns in the most polished performance I have seen at Tufts this season...
...level the Tufts group does not provide. They fail, both in their line readings and in their movements, to convey any real feeling. Marilyn Rawlins as Mrs. Crochet fails less than the others. But the largest share of the blame should be laid at the feet of director Marston Balch, who has utterly failed to produce any unity, either of accent or of movement or of relationships in this performance. Tom Davis' picturesque and technically impressive set deserves high praise...