Whether it be taken as a "key" play and a penetrating satire of the contemporary stage, or whether it be viewed as good old-fashioned rough-house, the Harvard Dramatic Club's revised version of Sheridan's "The Critic," which opened last night for a three-day run at the Peabody Playhouse, provides healthy entertainment. In the original Sheridan told his contemporaries that entertaining was better than preaching, and many will see in this revival a revival of that warning directed at present-day dramatist. Others will see merely the H.D.C. gone slightly berserk.

As the first act of the original delivers the lesson and the succeeding acts are given over to farce, so it is with the current production. It must be said in all frankness, however, that the opening act of the latter is atrocious. Although the make-up department has cleverly turned out a George Jean Nathan, an Alexander Woolcott, and an Orson Welles, these gentlemen's attempts at acting are deplorable, even when allowances are made for first-night stage-fright. Only the skill of John W. Sever '40, as Maxwell Anderson alias Mr. Puff, and the charm of Dorothe Larson of the Bishop Lec Dramatic School induce the audience to return to their seats after the intermission.

The audience is rewarded, however, for in the nonsensical play-within-a-play which takes up the remaining two acts there is genuine homer. This is supplied by deft touches, ranging from Eleanore Bell's exclamation, "Oh, Ecthtathy of blithe!" through the able clowning of Agnes Love to the finale in which Eleasnor Spencer and Jonas N. Mulcloud of white balloons to the strains of "I Married an Angel."

Unfortunately, very little credit for this performance can go to the Dramatic Club. The few lines that call for acting, such as Miss Spencer's "mad Ophelia" scene, are read by women, while the men in the cast are uniformly poor, always excepting Mr. Sever and possibly Jervis B. McMechan '42. Moreover the man responsible for the revision of the play, as well as its direction and staging, is Jack Munro, a 28-year-old Canadian actor and author who boasts "a crimson past but no connection with Harvard." In spite of this outside assistance, or quite possibly because of it, "The Critic" may be recommended as refreshing entertainment.