It is by virtue of this psychological quality that Deathwatch is a drama and not a philosophic dialogue. Genet is a skillfull dramatist, and he is well served in the present production.

Theatre East (Sixtieth Street near Third Avenue) is a cramped basement whose very slightly claustrophobic atmosphere reinforces the mood of the play, which is given in three-sided arena style with the audience close upon it. The arena arrangement strengthens the claustrophobic feeling, and Jack Youngerman's stark set does nothing to dissipate it.

The performance that seethes across this cockpit diverges a good deal from Genet's expressed intentions. In the version of the play published by Grove Press (which I have had to use for my quotations, and which is slightly different from the version being used in this production), the dramatist lays down some directions.

"...as in a Dream"

The entire play unfolds as in a dream ... The movement of the actors should be either heavy or else extremely and incomprehensibly rapid, like flashes of lightning. If they can, the actors should deaden the timbre of their voices. Avoid clever lighting. As much light as possible."

But director Leo Garen had other plans. He has given us, as Stephen Aaron did in Cambridge, a vigorous, straightforward, realistic, Methodical performance. Genet is much interested in the nature and relationship of illusion and reality; his idea of a dream-Deathwatch probably has something to do with this hobby of his. It is a dangerous hobby, however, likely to lead an author into arid jiggery-pokery. Probably both directors were wise in refusing to sacrifice to it the excitement we derive from watching people act and suffer onstage, rather than dream-phantoms. A proudction directed along Genet's lines might easily be bloody dull, but since Genet is to a great extent liberated from our values, there is no telling what might come into his mind. Perhaps dullness was for some reason his intention. Well, Genet has all sorts of intentions with which the rest of us cannot be expected to sympathize.

Garen might, however, have paid some attention to certain specific directions that Genet has incorporated into the text. They indicate a rawer, more theatrical, gutsier approach than Garen has used--and gutsiness is needed in a play that depends on tension and violence for its effectiveness and for the conveyance of its meanings.

"I make a nice couple"

For example: though Green Eyes calls himself "alone," he has had a never-completely-defined relationship with a woman on the outside. He suggests that Maurice's fascination with him is "for her. Am I wrong? When you looked at me, it was just to find out how our bodies fit together." Maurice has said earlier to Green Eyes, "Just seeing her through you drives me almost nuts," and Green Eyes has answered, "I make a nice couple, eh?" Still earlier, Lefranc says sneeringly to Maurice of Green Eyes, "...I didn't talk about him as if he were a young bridge." It appears, then, that Green Eyes, though it is frequently said that he is "the man," somehow also is the woman--the woman whom Maurice, while vowing loyalty to Green Eyes, at one point volunteers to murder. This theme of Green Eye's woman, Green Eyes as woman, runs through the play--one of the paradoxes of which Genet is fond. It is dramatized, summarized, in one moment of action, where Green Eyes "opens his shirt brutally and reveals his torso to Maurice. On it is tattooed a woman's face." In Garen's production, instead of a brutal gesture there is only a discreet peek.

For the murder, Genet's directions read:

Green Eyes is perched on a basin and dominates the stage as Lefranc, smiling, bears down on Maurice, who in the presence of this radiant smile, also smiles ... He [Lefranc] blocks Maurice in a corner and strangles him. Maurice slides to the floor between Lefranc's spread legs.

In Garen's version, the murder had not enough of the strange excitement these directions indicate. Green Eyes did not dominate the stage, and one of Genet's characteristic enigmas was dodged instead of posed: why does Green Eyes countenance the murder of Maurice, when Maurice is his friend, and when he had already stopped at least one previous attempt of Lefranc to murder Maurice.

Competent Direction

Perhaps these directions are not in the version of the play used in this production. But one of the functions of a director is, when an author disagrees with himself, to select his best thoughts.

But Garen's job is highly competent, if not brilliant profound, and the same can be said of three of his actors: George Maharis (Green Eyes), Vic Morrow (Lefranc), and Athan Karras (Guard). The fourth actor is Harold Scott '57, and his Maurice is brilliant or very near it. Even allowing for his substantial growth as an artist since he first played the part, his performance is evidence that the best Harvard acting is easily at home on the professional stage. Genet has endowed Maurice with a characteristic movement repeated several times: "Maurice flicks his head as if tossing back from his forehead an exasperating lock of hair." Scott's version of this movement lacks a certain pungency, lacks the sense that it is a summary of all that is annoying, feline, insidious about this "kid who slips through walls." But in every other respect he has tellingly underscored the quirks and idiosyncrasies that were already so well conceived and rendered in his performance in Cambridge.