8
Thursdav. October 27,1977
University Daily Kansan
Play depicts inability to find love
By JERRY SASS
Reviewer
It a story and a song of men and women,
of love and the failure to achieve love.
It's a play, "In This Foreign Land," and it works like its characters.
"In This Foreign Land" opened last night at the Inge Theatre in Murphy Hall. It shows some promise, both in the performance and the quality of the play.
The play is a story of man and a woman who are thrown together in the setting, oddly enough, of a Midwestern university theatre group.
EDWIN, THE protagonist, is a product of the late 1980s philosophy. He is seemingly wise, thoughtful, a judo master and given to windy philosophy. He can shamble through the mountains but not outside or laugh at himself and the world, but not enough to hide all his emotions.
Edwin blows into town to visit his sister, Edwin, who is marria drama professor Mormon.
Shannon, the female lead, is an emotional woman who never quite seems to know what she wants from anyone. She too, has feelings of being under her ability to come with love relationships.
Laura and Malcolm offer little to the play, beyond the opportunity for more twisted moments.
Rebates . . .
From page one
in a difference of $600, or a rebate of about
$10 for each resident.
The shortage in the amount collected was because some residents had not fully paid their taxes.
Ervin said, "Bob Rozzelle told me that as of September only four or five people out of all the men's halls hadn't fully paid, ranging in amounts from $25 to $500.
"I don't believe there could be that many deliquent accounts as of June 30. But I don't know because Rozelle couldn't furnish the dates of payments."
ERVIN SAID THERE might be other reasons for the differences in ruile figures. One posits reason, resulting in a paraphrase from Stephenson, was confirmed by Rozelle
"Part of the dining income from residents at Stephenson was put in an account for rental. It was an accounting mistake," he said.
Because fiscal year and academic year figures are mingled, figure differences could be created, according to Ervin. For example, both housing and scholarship payments would be whether a Jane 1 housing payment be credited to an old or a new fiscal year.
"I don't think you can blame all the differences on late bills," Ervin said.
He said he had been working on the rebates since August 26, when he sent a letter to the housing accountant, Bob Bracken concerning the hall's understanding.
"I think they (housing officials) finally decided to do something because of the pressure and because they were tired of talking about it," Ervin said.
KANSAN
On Campus
EDWIN HAS left a sterny marriage and pending divorce in San Francisco, and she is planning to move there.
Edwin finds his sister at a cast party at Shanon's home, and she winds up inviting him to stay until he finds a job and an apartment.
Events
TODAY: MARINE CORPS OFFICER
SELECTION officer will be interviewing
prospective Marine Corps officers all day in
booth 1 of the Kansas Union. Representatives from Southern Methodist University
will be interviewed at 8 a.m. in the Union's
Regionalist Room. GERMAN CLUB will meet at 3:45 p.m. in 4076 Wescoe Hall.
PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT will sponsor a talk, "Listening and Reading," by Dominic Massaro, professor at the
Military Wisconsin, at 4 p.m. in Room
547 Fraser Hall.
Edwin, of course, is also a writer, and he has written an essay on love that espouses open sexual relationships, even after one is married.
TONIGHT: SUA BRIDGE CLUB will meet at 6:30 in the Union's Pine Room. An American Association of PETHOLEUM Volunteers, the University of Loucks, vice president of Sunburst Exploration, Inc., of Denver, will speak at 7 in the Apollo Room of Nichols Hall. AFRICAN STUDIES films "The Caribbean: Life on Earth," an event for students of the Americas," will be presented at 7 in Strong Hall Auditorium. KU SAILING CLUB will meet at 7:30 in the Union's Partors. KU BALLOONING ASSOCIATION CLUB will meet at 7:30 in the Union's Forum Room.
The plot thickens, and by the time the actors are ready to quit, the play has become a thick glue that the audience only wants to leave behind.
TOMORROW: Representatives from Southern Methodist University and Tula University SCHOOLS OF LAW will be interviewing from 9 a.m. until noon in 208 Strong Hall. ENGLISH LECTURE by G. S. Bentley. LUNCH AND DINNER: State of the "Profession" will be at 4 p.m. in the Union's Walnut Room. AFRIKAN CLUB will meet at 6:30 p.m. in the Union's Parlor C. CREATIVE FANTASY CLUB will meet at 7 p.m. in the Union's Jayhawk Room. Beverly Bradley, county commissioner, will visit College REPUBLICANS meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the Union's Council Room. KUFOLK DANCE CLUB will meet at 7:30 p.m. at Potter's Pavilion or, in case of bad weather, 173 Robinson Gymnasium. FOREIGN STUDENT-HOST FAMILIES DINNER will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Union's Big Eagle Center. FUSION DANCE CLUB will be at 8 p.m. in Swarthout Rectal Hall in Murphy Hall. Robert Minor, of the School of Religion, will speak on "God and Man in Eastern Thought" as part of the CAI-TERBURY LECTURES at 8 p.m. at the Canterbury House, 1116 Alabama Street.
The glue that holds the audience and the players together is frustration. The audience is held by a desire to walk up on stage and slam the two main characters together. The emotions and the undercurrents in this play work well.
THE PLAY is also an exercise in recent history. Anyone who has loved and lost or who has lived in the soap-oper existence of the theatre company, will love the familiar scenes.
The play is a perceptive collage of observations, an open window into the hearts and souls of the characters. But the window is left open too long, and the heavy
The dialogue is both trite and heavy. There are little throwaway lines made of little more than air, and soliloquies that become so tedious that they all on turned-off
emotional scenes become annoying at the end of the final act.
BUT IT is a promising work, full on insights that stay at a high emotional pitch throughout. And for his first full-length work. Haehl has done well.
The actors are good, without exception. Richard Delaware, as Edwin, burrbles and philosophes his way through the play with ease and easy grace of a disciplined actor.
Dana Faust, as Shannon, plays a curious incompetent character, but still manages to be a good listener.
The minor characters are generally too undeveloped to see more than brief glimpses. Two of them, Bruce Schentes as R.D. and Dee Dee Diermer as Ruthann, are bright lights that cut through the dulling attack on the audience's senses.
THE PLAY is well directed, though it seems more out of control at the end. The character's eyes widen and trembles, and to the point. The strong directing shows particularly in the first few scenes.
The Inge Theatre lends itself to such a play. The play has, experimental in its approach and so is rich in
If the play should go in the American College Theatre Festival competition, it will need revision. If it is removed from the intimate environment of the Ings, it will
Edwin, Shannon and Laura all act as narrators to move the play along from scene to scene. As a writer, she also adds to the intimacy of the production. Time seems strangely out of focus, though, in a play that covers several months, which peaks from a break from an audience place in the future.
It is an experiment, a new play and a good one.
"In This Foreign Land" is well worth seeing, but as Edwin says in the final line of the play, "I hope you didn't expect a happy ending."
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