The Execution Cure

OFF BROADWAY

Someone offstage is pronounced guilty of a series of unintelligible crimes, and in marches the prisoner, to be thrust into his cell by a buffoon of a turnkey with baggy pantaloons and clown makeup. Suddenly the two of them are waltzing around the cell together to appropriate music. The whole play is like that--sudden and senseless as a dream.

A bad dream it is, and not much of a play either, as adapted by Russell McGrath from a book that the great contemporary novelist, Vladimir Nabokov, wrote in the '30s, called Invitation to a Beheading. As this season's final production of Joseph Papp's Public Theater, it suffers from the dramatic deficiencies common to other people's dreams--the characters are unreal, the tension is nonexistent, and the humor is heavy. So, too, is the symbolism, for which Producer Papp seems to have a weakness, as in his last season's Ergo and The Memorandum.

The play takes place, according to the program, in "The Artist's Mind." What bugs this prisoner, unlike Kafka's "K." (see CINEMA), is not ignorance of his crime, but of how much time he has left to complete his creative projects. His jailers not only refuse to tell him, they make work impossible by badgering him with camaraderie and kindness--dropping in for chats, cleaning out his cell, entertaining him with inane games and tricks. Nothing these caricatures have to say is particularly trenchant or arresting. But the way they say it is an elegant example of inventive staging, costuming and ensemble playing under the direction of Gerald Freedman, which all but makes up for the script.

The acting is high-styled and full of flair. John Heffernan, as the prisoner, awaits his fate with a finely sustained projection of frustration and despair, and Joseph Bova is certainly the most jovially sadistic executioner a man could lose his head over.

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