Harvard may not be exactly a Midwestern University, but the connection is close enough so that "The Male Animal," with Old M. U. as its locale, strikes a responsive note. Probably all schools have trustees and intellectual English professors and football heroes of two generations, none of whom get along too well together. And therein, decided Messrs. Thurber and Nugent, lies a tale. Their treatment of the struggle between Professor Tommy Thompson, played most appealingly by Elliott Nugent himself, and the various and sundry trustees and All-Americans who try to rob him of his intellectual freedom and his wife makes swell comedy.

Tommy's pathetic fear of the amatory competitor of his youth, and his belief that his wife still loves the other man, lead to the high point of the play, a scene in which, fortified by a liberal dose of scotch, he decides to defend his mate by force, "like a tiger and his cubs." His eventual victory over the forces of ignorance is a wonderful boost to an intellectual ego shot to pieces by a week of midyears.

The roster of fascinating characters includes a worried old dean who goes home to his Ovaltine whenever the action gets hot; a radical editor with the playwrights' universal sign of radicalism-a shock of hair; and a telephone voice answering to the name of Hot Garters. Leon Ames as the former midwestern star back for homecoming is cast to perfection. Even without a capable set of actors, however, the Thurber humor in the lines would still make "The Male Animal" highly entertaining.