REVIEWS:

CHATAUQUAN DAILY

Superb Cast, music, and plot make 'Prague Spring' memorable by Gerald Heglund

Larry Tarrant, Resident Play House Director, selected a choice piece of chamber theater, packaged the finest of theatricality and presented it to a Norton Hall audience on Thursday Evening. The majority of the audience seemed to enjoy it and well they might. The play has everything...a superb cast, good music, an important plot which develops uniquely withing an intricate framework. The 'Our Town' setting also helped to make 'a night at the theater' both enjoyable and brain stretching. Nor can we negate the clever lines and lyrics which contributed to this stunning performance.

Briefly, Lee Kalcheim's "The Prague Spring" focuses on the political turmoil ensuing in Czechoslavakia during its short term of freedo. Leaders of the party and other high-ranking officials grapple with the vacillation of Alexander Dubcek, First Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and thereon hangs the action.

DIFFICULT DUBCEK ROLE

Dubcek is not an easy role to play. Richard Oberlin, Play House Director, is a superb craftsman, however, and he tackled the role with the unfailing skill of a veteran actor, which, of course, he is. The result was a memorable and convincing portrayal of the man who could never quite believe in his party's impersonal behavior. At one point in Act I, in reviewing episodes of erratic behavior, he questions, "How could Communists behave like this?" Later faced with the decision of resignation, his Jewish friend, Kriegel cautions him, "Don't keep fighting the battle within yourself."

VERSATILE TURNEY

Kriegel is played by a real bundle of talent, Wayne S. Turney. Whether the rabble-rousing university student or the ailing Kriegel and all the other characters in between, (all cast members except Oberlin had to assume a variety of roles), Turney carried his audience with him. His is almost an unbelievable talent. Incidentally, he played a fine flute in accompaniment to the song, "Life Was Good," as did Joe Lauck on the guitar.

Both Joe Lauck and James Kisicki, comparative newcomers to the Play House, contributed impressively in this stellar casting. They, too, turned in honest portrayals of sundry characters, but wilol best be remembered for their main characterizations, Lauck as Husak, Dubcek's successor, and Kisicki as Gen. Swoboda.

Veteran actor Richard Halverson scored brilliantly in his many portrayals. Whether Breznev or the patter song man with the 'Prague Five', he dashed off his assignments with disarming ease.

Perky Sharon Bicknell, again the lone woman in the cast, as in last week's production, added the needed sprightliness to contrast and lighten the repeated somber overtones which emerged throughout the production. Not only can this girl act, but she sings! And so very lovely. Her lovely soprano was heard advantageously in the tender "Will the Sun?" as well as in the impeccable ensemble singing heard throughout the performance.

FINE VOCALS

Together, the cast of six produced some of the finest ensemble work to be seen on the Norton Hall stage. They evoked laughter, nostalgia, and tension intermittently both in the spoken and sung word. Their ensemble singing was a joy to hear. Here again, one realized how lucky Tarrant had been...to find actors who could belt out somebelievably good vocals.

Joseph Raposo has written some interesting music for this production. We still remember the tunes, with pleasure of the already-mentioned "Will the Sun." But then there was the martially effective "Truth Prevails," the humorous "Ivan," the poignant "Life Was Wonderful," and the jaunty "Cocktail Gavotte." David Gooding, at the keyboard, provided some excellent and sensitive accompaniment.

For the smooth vignette transitions we must acknowledge the contributions of Richard Gould in lighting and Dave Smith for porperties as well as Tarrant's perceptive direction.

An oft-repeated phrase heard en route from the theater was, "I'd like to see it again--it's that kind of a play." This opportunity is given this evening when "The Prague Spring" will again be staged at Norton Hall for an 8:15 performance. It's a play well worth seeing again.

POST JOURNAL 'Prague Spring' Production Handicapped by Formal Stage by Robert W. Plyler

Americans aren't very sophisticated about politics. There really isn't taht much difference between a Republican and a Democrat. So many Americans will not be interested in "The Prague Spring," which is this week's offering from Cleveland Play House Summer Theater at Chatauqua.

The play, written by Lee Kalcheim, is performed in the style of the European political caberet. It deals, on the first and most basic level, with the spring of 1968 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. But it is more that that. It is a play about a human being, and what can be asked of him in return for the right to live.

The are that we call Czechoslovakia had been trodden under history's heel since Atilla the Hun. The Inquisition burned Protestants there. The Threaty of Versailles drew some lines on a map around diverse and disparate groups of people and created the country in 1918. In 1938, France and England gave it to Hitler as a present to keep him from starting a war. In 1945, the United States allowed Russia to occupy it in return for support agains Japan.

During the spring of 1968, under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek, the country abolished censorship, established a form of government in which people had the right to vote and speak their minds, and the rights of people to form loyal minorities was established. The same year, Russian tanks entered the nation, Dubcek was arrested, and the country was returned to its
"normal" position as a Soviet sattelite.

The play follows the actions from the election of Dubcek by the Communist presidium ("What we need is an independent man we can control completely") through the final decision by Dubcek to accept disgrace rather than be a puppet to Moscow.

Richard Oberlin portrayed Dubcek. He was the only actor to portray the same character through all of the songs and short dramatic scenes that make up the entire play. He alone wore the dignity of a three-piece suit, while the other characters wore the faceless browns and grays of the working class everywhere.

The company of Joe D. Lauck, James Kisicki, Wayne S. Turney, Sharon Bicknell and Richard Halverson played all of the other characters, and also did all of the singing.

European caberet is hard to do anywhere, and doubly hard in a formal theater, like Norton Hall. In an effort to make the audience feel more a part of the actionk the curtains were all pulled back. The set consisted of platforms in from of a bare back wall, with ladders scattered around the edges. Whever possible, actors would come into the aisles. At the beginning, the performers sort of edged onto the stage and a bit of business went along in which Sharon Bicknell pretended she didn't know how to get to the stage from the balcony.

But the distance of the audience from the action was a major factor that detracted from the play's effectiveness.

Bicknell, who had made a habit of being the only woman in all-male casts, was a jamor light in the performance. Her strong singing voice and facile transformation from character to character contributed greatly. Even with her great attractiveness shrouded in loose gray clothes and a head scarf, she knows how to grab the audience's attention, keep it while necessary, and pass it wherever it should go next.

Wayne Turney is a young man who is capable of suggesting whole concepts with a word or a gesture. In a uniformly outstanding male ensemble, he stood out regularly.

All of these forces were endeavoring to focus attention on one concept, and that is the question whether humanity is capable of building a world of peace, safety and freedom, or if war, domination and fear are inevitable parts of the human condition.

The men who died so that Americans could vote must turn in their graves, for example, when less than half of the electorate turns out for an election. Should the Czechs have thrown themselves under the treads of the Russian tanks rather than live under domination? And does a man like Dubcek do right by leading people to throw away the little they have for an ideal?

"The Prague Spring" is a play that will be inspriational and heart-rending to anyone capable of understanding that the world has more to fear from witch hunters than witches.