The year 1958 provided serious theatregoers in the Boston area with a good deal of summer dramatic fare. The season as a whole fell somewhat short of last summer's level, which was the highest within memory. Still, there were plenty of things this summer to be especially thankful for.

The brunt of the burden fell, as before, on three institutions: the Group 20 Players at Wellesley's Theatre on the Green, the Boston Summer Theatre in New England Mutual Hall, and the Tufts Arena Theatre in Medford.

Cambridge itself had two productions, staged by a group of students who called themselves the Harvard Summer Theatre Group.

Of all the companies, the Group 20 Players maintained the highest quality in choice of play and level of production. They offered four shows instead of the announced five, since two of the four proved to be such hits that each was held over an extra week, and the scheduled production of Giraudoux's Tiger at the Gates was dropped at the season's close.

Sheridan's School for Scandal got the season off to a running start. A study of hypocrites and slanderers and their various entanglements, it is the classic English comedy of manners, reviving all the wit but not the obscenity of its Restoration predecessors. Even so, for years it could be presented in this country only under the guise of a "Comic Lecture in Five Parts on the Pernicious Vice of Scandal."

Oft-mounted as the play is, the chances are that it will probably never be performed any better; director Jerome T. Kilty '49 fashioned a show of amazing freshness and vitality. The most striking feature of this production was a complete stylistic consistency, which is the hardest virtue to achieve in a period piece like this. With one exception, every member of the cast down to the tripping maid (Moira Wylie '60) and whirl-wind butler (Robert Jordan '59) captured the proper unified style in both word and gesture.

Top honors went to Max Adrian, the "old, dangling" Sir Peter Teazle, and Cavada Humphrey, his young bride Lady Teazle. Adrian is a past master of timing and comic acting--a second "incomparable Max." And, as usual, it was a joy to watch Miss Humphrey's lovely carriage and to listen to her crystal-clear diction.

The other roles were well handled, the only jarring notes being contributed by Thomas Hill (Sir Oliver Surface), who, fine as he is in the more realistic modern repertory, could not attune his diction to the period style required here.

William D. Roberts designed another of his handsomely symmetrical two-level unit sets, complete with the celebrated gallery of ten ancestral portraits.

The next offering, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, had to be held over for an extra week. This eloquent and moving tragedy of the little man is surely the finest serious American play since Eugene O'Neill; and it enjoyed a distinguished performance under a British director, Basil Langton, despite the fact that it is an intensely American work.

Thomas Hill took the title role of Willy Loman. This type of part is exactly his dish of tea; he was utterly convincing at every moment, and compared favorably with his local predecessors in the role--Lee J. Cobb, Thomas Mitchell, and Dean Gitter '56.

Olive Dunbar made a wonderfully warm and pathetic Mrs. Loman. She was fine all the way through until her closing monologue in the Requiem, which proved a bit too much for her. Robert Evans '59 and Robert Blackburn were a fine pair of errant sons; and John Peters '52 made a splendidly materialistic Uncle Ben.

My one major reservation concerned the choice of background music, which was decidedly off-key with the rest of the production. For a play as purely American as this, surely something more appropriate could have been found than the exotic Brazil-inanities of Villa-Lobos.

Jerome Kilty thrives on challenges and obstacles; and once again he took a thorny classic and turned it into a viable and engrossing theatrical experience. The Merchant of Venice is a good play; but director Kilty made it seem like a great play, and this was no mean feat. One forgot that the play is poorly constructed and rather liberally endowed with passages where Shakespeare definitely nodded.

This production inevitably invited comparison with the one last summer at Stratford. Though the general approach was different, it measured up well and was in some respects superior.