Word: morrows
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FOUCHEVAL, A Fable for Philistines, a new play by Lance Morrow '63. Tonight at Dunster House...
Humbert Foucheval (played by author Lance Morrow) stole the bread from his church's altar when he was young, and has been playing out a whole series of Mr. Morrow's fantasies ever since. His obsession is carving a mountain into an equestrian status of Crazy Horse, which represents, among other things, a desire to resurrect the noble barbarian, a wish to imprison God in stone and thus kill him, and a hope of consecrating the stone of the mountain. I know all these things, because Morrow has written them into the monologue that constitutes the last quarter...
...acting is good, in the face of overwhelming odds. Morrow is a better actor than writer, and often uses his voice effectively, though the character is so tiresomely inconsistent that consistent interpretation is impossible. Lynn Milgrim, as his wife Moira, is about as distraught as I would expect any women to be who was entrapped in Morrow's dramatic madhouse. Tim Grieser and Gordon Lund suffer from direction that flatly contradicts their lines: they try to sound like zombies with lines that sound silly delivered that...
...tourists who rubberneck at Foucheval's statue are characteristic of another problem: they are funny in a slapstick way, just as Foucheval is often funny in a flip way. But comedy added to philosophy does not automatically produce tragicomedy: Morrow has made no synthesis of tone. It is a miracle that the audience can appreciate the mood of Moira's marvelous waltz scene. The last act is also dramatically outrageous, despite fine touches of lighting and staging...
...these problems pile up in Foucheval, who just doesn't hold together. His behavior is discontinuous, almost irrelevant from one act to the next. His insanity is never explained or resolved; Morrow just decides to cure it and throw a little irrelevant philosophizing into the bargain. He doesn't even respect the audience enough to pretend to continuity. There's just the mountain and the madman, like props...