Merton Hodge's "The Wind and the Rain" blows in frenzied gusts across the Peabody stage, and leaves one touched by its graceful play of emotions, and gently stirred by its restrained passions. This is not a play to convulse the spectator with vicarious woe, nor to rack his brain with subtle problems of mind and soul. It rather wins his benevolent sympathy for the characters who are ruffled but not torn.

In this it succeeds eminently, through the felicitous casting and the intuition of every player in his role. Norton Goodwin in the part of Charles Tritton trembles and wavers and broods just as he should. He is an English medical student whom one follows through a Scotch university. During the course of the play he exchanges an earthy, ebullient childhood sweetheart (Bettina Gray) for a skyey, placid sculptress (Lois Hall). That is the essence of the drama, and the cause of the various spasms.

Goodwin interprets his part with the utmost care, the only possible objection being that he may be a little too assiduous. For the emotion stays pretty close to the surface, and therefore Goodwin's elaborate explanations with hands and voice are somewhat gratuitous. Bettina Gray may likewise be a little too vehement. Perhaps the difficulty is that they are designing their speeches to carry farther than their tiny playhouse permits. At any rate, this excessive elucidation insures that the right interpretation be given. Lois Hall is ideally supple for her part of the sculptress. When throbbing in response to some dramatic situation, her voice rises to a rather unpleasant shrillness, but what is lost in euphony is probably gained in realism. Paul Killiam, Jr. is splendid as one of the companion medical students, a primitive fellow with a rare good humor and a tremendous appetite for the frivolities. And so on through the rest in the cast: Isabella Gardner, John Flower, Alfonse Ossorio, Paul Sturges, and John Barnard; they're all uniformly good.

The dialogue is effectively simple. There is little originality, and such familiar episodes as the avowal by the lovers that fate has meant them for each other, appear in this play. But they are handled, by playwrights and players, with a vitalizing skill. Neither is there much outright humor. The comic relief consists mainly in the mundane or drunken suties of Mr. Killiam and the unaccountable tricks of the man who works the lights. Thus all contributes to the winningly unpretentious impression that "The Wind and the Rain" imparts.