"The Bystander," presented by the Harvard and Radcliffe Playwrights Groups Tuesday evening, marks the realization by those groups of their intention to encourage locally the writing of plays in the same way that Professor Baker's 47 Workshop once did--by giving the playwright an opportunity to see his work brought to life on the stage. Since they have no pretensions toward attaining the perfection of the legitimate stage, it would not be fair to judge their production by those standards.

Actually, "Glad Eden," by Jack A. Rowel '51, was chosen the best of the plays submitted for judging to Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, William Van Lennep, Mary Martin, and Elinor Hughes. But that play is to be produced elsewhere. So the Playwrights Groups chose as their first production the runner-up, "The Bystander," by Loretta J. Valtz, a junior at Radcliffe.

Miss Valtz shows a decided talent for writing dialogue, especially of a witty nature, but her ability to plot situations through which convincing characters move has yet to be developed. The theme seems to concern itself with the inner problems of a young man who has lost his faith and turned to automobile racing as a complete involvement in which he can both lose himself and find himself at the same time. This seems to involve no conflict, though I might be wrong, as there also seems to be an attempt at resolution at the end. The plot fails to reach any sort of climax and the play ends with a dying fall as the young man renounces auto racing even at the moment when he finally wins a race. The scene is laid in Italy, by the way, though to no apparent purpose as neither situation nor characters is dependent on this locale.

It is difficult to tell how much some of the failings of the production Tuesday were failings of the play itself or how much they might have been the failings of the actors. Certainly when some of the actors, notably Edward Snow and Eric Sollee, played their parts with a passion which the Italian temperament calls for, the play came sharply to life, as it did not during the wordy, heavy first act. The playwright might do well for a time to use her talent for witty dialogue in lighter vehicles until she comes to command a surer grasp of the difficulties of character and situation.