The author was around for most of the rehearsal process on this one, a circumstance to which I was largely indifferent. I had done a couple of shows very early in my career at POG with Christine Jorgensen herself, so the presence of Miss Muschamp (who had started her career as Major George Muschamp) was not an issue for me. But for David, who did after all have to carry the bulk of the rhetoric in this one--I was there largely for the emotional outburst my breakdowns could provide--Miss Muschamp's presence was a huge distraction. David (of all people) found her circumstance to be too bizarre to be understood, and it took him quite a while to leap past it to the play. But leap past it he did with splendid results. This is the only major serious play (at least in its pretensions) I've done with D.O. who became a regular on Hickory Hideout. He was splendid.

REVIEW

THE CLEVELAND EDITION

Waiting for Nikolai by Catherine Podojil

October was World Premiere month at the Cleveland Play House. Besides Arthur Miller's The Archbishop's Ceiling (reviewed here October 18), Catherine Muschamp's The Waiting Room is also a first tiner. Scheduled to play in the Brooks Theatre through November 11, The Waiting Room is set in Potsdam Station, Berlin, in mid-April 1917. The German government has taken a desperate gamble--they have allowed the Russian revolutionary Lenin, exiled in Switzerland since 1914, to cross through Germany to neutral Sweden where he can make his way to Russia. They hope that Lenin's call for internal revolution, rather than war against Germany will slow down the Russian war effort. This would free German troops to confront the new threat posed by American entry into the War. The move is desperate because it is a treasonable action by both parties. Each is trading with the enemy, so it's important that the journey be kept top secret.

Well, enough of the history lesson. Except that it wasn't a lesson at Potsdam station on April 16, 1917, but history still being made. We observe none of the larger figures in the events but instead view the proceedings through the eyes of two German officers assigned to ride with Lenin and his fellow emigres to make sure they are kept safe, no to say confined.

Captain von Planetz (David O. Frazier) and Lieutenant von Buhring (Wayne S. Turney) are cooling their heels in the station, entoute to Sweden, where von Planetz begins to speculate on the meaning of the event they are involved in, using his fellow officer as a foil. He raises some interesting considerations. What is really going to happen to Lenin and his followers on this trip? Will they be assassinated? What deals have gone down and what will become of con Planetz and von Buhring to ensure their silence about Lenin's presence in Gemany? REpeated references are made to Hamlet's hapless friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who were sent to their deaths as pawns in the warfare between Hamlet and Claudius.

The two officers are a little too opposite for complete believability--von Planetz questioning, playing the devil's advocate, cynical to the point of treason. In fact, I wonder how he fits into the mold of Prussian officer at all. Von Buhring is the antithesis, a ramraod, square-edged believer, son of an ambassador, secure and unquestioning, and more than slightly disgusted by his compatriot, both personally and politically.

In the second act, the two return from dinner, a clever ruse (it appears) to absent them from the station, to find Lenin and his group gone--the train has simple disappeared. The officers have been locked into the station. Now the real fear descends, in a claustrophobic, stomach-churning clamp, as men begin to see new possibilities. Has Lenin been captured, double-crossed? Is he off making a new deal with Arthur Zimmerman, the German secretary of state? Why have the station windows been covered, preventing the officers from viewing the movement of trains or any other actiohn? At the act's end, the two are released to join the train and continue to Sweden--and what? Nothing has been resolved. We know only that they are alive for now.

Although Muschamp has constructed a historical moment as seen from the vantage point of less powerful people, I don't think the play ever makes clear whether she believes in the "great men" theory of history or whether she thinks we all have a part in its creation. The second act, in which the two officers consider their own possible effect of Germany and Germans, Russia and Russians, suggests the latter. But von Planetz's curtain line, something to the effect of "God be with us, for we know what we do," is too little too late because there has been insufficient preparation for it.

The success of the dramatic moments in the play are due largely to the energetic direction by William Rhys. David Frazier is a swaggering, vulgar captain, who seems to get a charge out of his predicament, as it gives him leave for interesting intellectual games. Wayne Turney's lieutenant is a frightened child locked up in an officer's suit. When he begins to believe the worst and comes apart in the second act, the men's relationship becomes almost father/son. Frazier comforts him with stories of the friendship to be found on the field of battle. As in Miller's current work The Archbishop's Ceiling, the players must attempt to create drama and emotion where there is little or none, and though they are a pleasure to watch, they can't quite overcome the weight of wordiness.

And Muschamp's play commits an even greater, non-artistic offense. Whatever its intentions, it confirms a view prevalent in our society that history is not a process in which we might all be actively engaged in some way other than pawn or victim, but an inert thing about which we learn passively, after the fact. History, instead of being people engaged in the making of change, is people talking about it. The on-stage result? Dull history, and, often, unsatisfying theater.