New Plays In Manhattan

Billy Budd (adapted from Herman Melville's story by Louis O. Coxe & Robert Chapman; produced by Chandler Cowles & Anthony B. Farrell) is a brave shot at a difficult target. On its own terms the sea story that constitutes Herman Melville's valedictory to life is certainly great enough. But to recast it for the theater means tackling a subject far deeper than the sea, grappling with a far-from-well-told story. It means handling utterance that now soars on wings, now walks on stilts. It means working with characters that are essentially black & white, must not become flesh & blood. In essence, Melville's tale of the mystery of good & evil is both too simple and too complex for the stage.

The story takes place aboard H.M.S. Indomitable in 1798, the year after the British mutiny at the Nore. Billy Budd is a handsome, blue-eyed, stammering young sailor who radiates innocence and good will, and is a favorite with the whole ship. The one exception is the master-at-arms, John Claggart, a figure of Mephistophelean evil, who, hating all goodness, cannot but hate Billy Budd and plot his destruction. He accuses Billy, in the presence of high-principled Captain Vere, of fomenting mutiny.

Shocked by the accusation, blocked by his stammer from denying it, Billy can only strike at Claggart, with a blow that kills him. At the subsequent court-martial, the Captain is agonized between his duty to "war's child," the Act of Mutiny, and his compassion for what might be his own child. But the tyranny of law, however harsh, he finds less hateful than the tyranny of lawlessness; and he decrees that Billy Budd must hang.

Playwrights Coxe & Chapman have understood Melville's story. They have not sentimentalized it. They have kept Billy from seeming a mere goody-goody. They have banished all bravura from the trial scene. They have contrived a very quiet scene where the Captain tells Billy of his fate. Moreover, they are well served by Norris Houghton's direction, Paul Morrison's fine stage sets, the acting of Dennis King, Torin Thatcher, Charles Nolte as the Captain, Claggart, Billy.

But neither on its own terms nor on Melville's is Bitty Budd completely satisfying. It suffers from a need for merely life-sized motivations and actions: the rattan-raising, crew-terrorizing Claggart is too conventional a villain; the Captain is too ordinary a disciplinarian.The play also suffers from that iron law of stages, the 11 o'clock curtain. For two acts it stirs in a good deal of miscellaneous material, from a comically brief sea fight to a farcical midshipman out of Mister Roberts.

It emerges half transcendental tragedy, half merely nautical melodrama. It would perhaps prosper best on the stage as a kind of Mystery Play, with a medieval sense of moral affirmation. It seems alien to Broadway, though it is more interesting, whatever its faults, than the great run of Broadway plays.

Ti-Coq (by Fridolin; produced by Fri-dolin Productions in association with Lee & J. J. Shubert) brought Canada's most popular comic to Broadway. Fridolin (real name: Gratien Gelinas) rose to fame through a series of revues (TIME, March 19, 1945), then wrote Ti-Coq, which he has performed--in French and English--for some 2 1/2 years. A negligible play, it was a less than inspired vehicle, closed after three performances.

Ti-Coq (Li'l Rooster) is about a World War II Canadian soldier at odds with life because of his illegitimate birth and orphanage upbringing. Then, spending Christmas at another soldier's home, he falls in love with the fellow's sister, becomes enraptured with family life. During his years overseas, the girl reluctantly marries someone else. Ti-Coq returns home crushed, to find that the girl still cares and would run away with him. But would they be committing a sin not to find a better solution?

Ti-Coq is a simple story, and perhaps needs only a finer touch to seem thoroughly touching. But Fridolin not only lacks skill at playwriting, so that his play straggles through a dozen jerky scenes; he shows no reticence about emotion, contrives a dozen tearjerky situations. There are effective and unhackneyed moments, but in general Ti-Coq raises soap-opera glasses to its already moist eyes.

A playwright of too many scenes, Fridolin is also an actor of too few gestures --a constant toss of the head, fling of the hand, flexing of the body. Nonetheless, at times he does seem a scrappy bantam; his humor does have a certain accent of life.

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