If Copley Productions is merely trying to give Boston a better than average taste of amateur theatricals, they're doing a first rate job. But if they seriously consider themselves a testing ground for plays of Broadway calibre, they're very definitely nestling in the wrong pew. Their offering this week, "Return Engagement," looks like a very bad combination of "Stage Door" and "Charley's Aunt." The title of the play shows at least a sense of humor on the part of the author--it very definitely is a return engagement of something you've seen innumerable times before.

The story centers about a summer theatre in Stockton, Connecticut, and is an uninspired and rather dull account of the tribulations of combining tempermental stars, feverish amateurs, and stuffy patronesses in one undersized barn. Bert Lytell and Mady Christians play the roles of the guest stars--but they act as if they thought they were the guests at the Copley as well as at Stockton, playing their parts purely on instinct and experience, with a singular lack of originality or enthusiasm. Most of their supporting cast show a vast amount of the enthusiasm the stars lack--but very little else. The only relief in the entire play is provided by Audrey Christie, who acts a tough little trouper with a shrewdness and verve that is beautiful to watch.

The union of a vapid play and a cast that, with one marked exception, runs the entire gamut from indifferent to very bad is an unfortunate one. If "Boyd's Shop," the Copley's first play this season, lasted only two nights on Broadway, "Return Engagement" had better prepare to go to bed right here in Beantown.