Rococo Rotter

Man and Boy, by Terence Rattigan. Last season Charles Boyer starred in Lord Pengo, a tracing-paper-thin characterization of Art Wheeler-Dealer Jo seph Duveen. Boyer was slyly fascinating; the play provoked yawns. In Man and Boy, Boyer plays Gregor Antonescu, a blurry blotting-pad version of the 20th century's master swindler, Ivar Kreuger. Boyer makes a charming cad; the play is a jaw-aching bore. If the evening proves anything, it is merely that actors who are graded 100 for talent sometimes get zero for judgment.

Playwright Rattigan's judgment ranks little higher. In a crucial scene, he asks the playgoer to believe that the homosexual president of a mammoth U.S. corporation would blandly ignore a $6,000,000 auditing discrepancy in Antonescu's books just to get the telephone number of a boy who has taken his fancy. The boy (Barry Justice) is Antonescu's illegitimate son, and the father is dangling him as pervert bait to land a merger that may save his Depression-gored financial empire. While waiting for this rococo rotter to tot up his accounts with a final bullet, idle-minded theater partygoers may wonder, in days to come, whether this playscript was found in Terence Rattigan's typewriter or his wastebasket.

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