Not Legal Tender

By T.E.K.

FIRST MONDAY IN OCTOBER

by ROBERT E. LEE and JEROME LAWRENCE

This is a dissertation on the law at the Supreme Court level, but within the province of dramatic jurisprudence it is a draggy, flaccid, unconvincing brief. First Monday in October is having its premiere at the Cleveland Play House, and if Jean Arthur and Melvyn Douglas were not in it, the play's obituary might well be written at the same time.

The hero, Justice Daniel Snow (Melvyn Douglas) is inspired by William O. Douglas. The heroine, Ruth Loomis, played by Jean Arthur, is quite simply hatched from the current foofaraw over women's lib. She is the first woman to be appointed a Justice of the Supreme Court. Her late husband, whose views she apparently shares, was a conservative of the Neanderthal stripe. Obviously, she irks Justice Snow. One of the internal contradictions of the play is that Snow, despite his liberal views, is some thing of a chauvinistic fossil when it comes to accepting women on the high bench. In any event, as you may possibly guess, Justice Snow, after suffering a heart attack, has so won his way into Justice Loomis' thought processes that she casts a vote his way in a close decision concerning some venal corporation. That is all the conflict that the drama contains, and it is pretty limp stuff.

Spunky Air. First Monday in October is intellectual and ideological Pablum seasoned with a few smart Broadway-style gags. What may one say of the two actors in whose presence count less Americans can stir up memories of their own youth? Douglas, 74, is a sly fox of an actor with great skill, and he makes Justice Snow a personable charmer. Jean Arthur, 70, still has the raspy little girl's voice that people remember from 1930s movies and a spunky air of perennial optimism. But the stage has never been her home, and it is not now.

Just because this particular play is destined for the dustbin does not mean that a varied season containing such up coming plays as Bingo, by England's Edward Bond, about Shakespeare's final years back in Stratford; Abigail Adams, Second First Lady, by Edith Owen; and The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia, by Preston Jones, about a lunatic-fringe group from Texas, may not provide some aesthetic rewards. To take a risk is the regional theater's brand of courage.

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