Word: leos
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Still, this play's saving grace is Berger's witty, terse dialogue. One masterful confrontation occurs in Celeste's apartment, when she tries to seduce Leo (or rather, to encourage him to seduce her) with the help of wine and her pocket Freud. Berger shows the calculations and machinations of his characters. If Leo acts like a sexual automaton (he places his hand on Celeste's leg; she asks sharply, "What is that?"), Celeste reacts coldly with banal psychology in her analysis of Leo's childhood. Employing a more experimental approach, Berger tries his hand at Joyce an stream...
Throughout the drama, the "menage a quatre" acts and reacts against its own desires. The menage functions as a melange, not as a unit but a confused mixture. Leo (Grant Bue), a socially inept intellectual, craves but avoids physical fulfillment which Celeste (Susan Roffer) vainly offers. Meanwhile, Leo's old college roommate Todd (Jeffery Harper), formerly the campus wildcat, can only manage sexual flings. Groping to awaken Todd's emotions, Lynnette (Elizabeth Genovese) merely succeeds in using love to achieve her egoistic ends. The four characters remain estranged from themselves and their partners...
Berger raises some interesting questions but he provides few satisfactory answers. At first, he examines the problem of sustaining a relationship hindered by a lack of either physical or emotional commitment. Although they erect different defenses, Leo and Todd both fear involvement. After Leo and Celeste consummate their affair, they still maintain their distance from each other. And though Todd and Lynnette say "I love you," they refuse "to be in love." They pass like shadows through each other's lives, melding together but emerging with no signs of having touched...
Unfortunately, in the second act Berger stumbles, failing to maintain his revealing characterizations. He resolves his psychodrama in the most facile manner. Instead of continuing to explore Todd's and Leo's inability to handle a deep involvement, he introduces a new theme--their suppressed homosexuality. Just as they hide their feelings for women, they submerge their love for each other. The frustrated lovers transfer their apprehension about homosexuality to their heterosexual relationships. It is too easy a solution. The candle that emitted illuminating rays in the first act has burned down to leave only an amorphous mass...
Previews of this show, opening Thursday from 5-7 p.m. promise that it contains the most exciting photographs to have been shown at Harvard in a long time. Mitch Epstein, Thomas Germano, Len Jenstel, Leo Rubinfein and David Wing are young (under 30) but precociously talented artists who won't be unknowns much longer, judging by the genius of their work. Using a camera of their own invention, they have gone searching for the facts of existence with a vision that intensifies that existence. Masters of the photographic medium, the five possess perceptions that can take what appear...