The Tufts Summer Theater production of William Congreve's The Way of the World is a travesty. It is enough to make someone who had not read the play think it a comedy--and not a very good one at that. Director Donald Mullin has chosen to deemphasize all that is grim about the play--which is precisely the element that makes it Congreve's masterpeice--and to focus on the humor. Unfortunately the humor falls flat.

The humor falls flat because the actors are trying too hard. Half of them be have as though they are in an elocution match. They are like men trying to crack a bull whip who have not yet got the knack of it. They all seem to believe that if they just say their lines crisply enough, or forcefully enough, they will get a laugh.

The problem with this approach is that it totally ignores character. Witwoud (Davil Anderson) and Petulant (Armand Asselin), for example, are foolish fops, but they are charming in their absurdity.

As played by Anderson, however, Witwourd is so ridiculous as tobe annoying.

Asselin has the advantage of a drunk scene, and a better sense of timing, but he is not much better.

The regular characters for the most part employ one acting technique: they speak rapidly and clearly in a variety of accents. The leading man, Spalding Gray, who plays Mirabell, is particularly poor. He has either been miscast, or misdirected. Supposedly the most attractive man in London, a wit and a charmer, he talks like a self-satisfied New England prep school master. Next to him the supposedly boorish Sir Wilfull Witwoud (John Peaks) is a gallant gentleman.

Nina Jeffers, as Lady Wishfort, and Nancy Volkman, as Mistress Marwood may be distinguished chiefly by their unintelligible accents. Miss Jeffers fail completely to convey the underlying desperation of Lady Wishfort, which, to a large extent, is what makes the play so extraordinary.

Elizabeth Cole, as Mistress Millamant, has at least a perfect set of facial expressions. But on an area stage especially, an actress needs to express her character with her voice as well. Whenever Miss Cole turned her back to play to another section of the theater, she seemed to step out of character. Without her smile and arching eyebrow to suggest the grand coquette, she sounded like a girl reading intriguing prose.

The only person who seemed to developed a character was Hopper. Her Foible, was clearly , more a character out of , sighing and fidgeting and biting her lip. But she stole whatever scene she appeared in.

I think the primary blame for all must go to Mullin. It seems that so many trained actors would play their parts in such limited fashions without being instructed to. And in that each actor does have some style of behavior while on stage, he is consistent.

In the scene where Millamant finally consents to marry Mirabell, for example, Miss Cole sticks to her careful articulation, and Gray to his sententions manner. Their conversation mainly concerns what limits they will put on each other's freedom: Mirabell is not to do this or that, Millamant is forswear such and such. The talk is very formal, but the two characters' emotions should be seen breaking through. Miss Cole and Gray played the scene like a pair of lawyers, however. This can only have been Mullin's idea, and I think it is an example of what his approach did to the play. Instead of seeing a pattern of fortune emerge from the fabric of polite convention, we see a series of incidents. Insteal of seeing people's emotions below the witty talk, we hear a lot of words.

When The Way of the World was first presented in 1700 it was poorly received. It is supposed to have been to , better read than seen. Perhaps so. I think an age that found it necessary to give Shakespeare's tragedies happy endings more likely had difficulty appreciating the "high seriousness" of the play than the raillery. But whichever is the case, it is strange that Mullin should have expected a 20th Century audience to respond to Restoration with which, according to tradition at least, was too complex for a Restoration audience. And it is strange, too, that he should have relied on the spectacle and the humor for his chief effect, when he had an audience already accustomed to facing unpleasant realities whenever they enter the theater. If Congreve's play was before his time, Mullin's production is behind his.