WHILE EUROPE reeled in shock before Ibsen's drama of a woman who leaves her husband, the characters of Shaw's The Philander calmly consorted themselves into the Ibsen club, a forward-looking institution open only to men who are not manly and women who are not womanly. Within the first few minutes of the satire it becomes apparent, however, that several members of the group are behaving dangerously like members of their respective sexes, despite their "advanced" views. The resolution of their unseemly romantic intrigue is the substance of this comedy which Shaw classed an "unpleasant play" -- unpleasant because the mores it lampoons are themselves distasteful.

Despite its author's classification, the play is lightly and rather shallowly satiric. It is also, like all Shaw, enormously difficult to act. And without vigorous guidance from director Catherine Clinton concerning the meaning of the play, the actors in the Loeb Ex production are not quite equal to the task of making The Philanderer an amusing and coherent statement, though some of them individually make talented efforts. That no common conception of the play is shared by the director and the cast is quickly betrayed by the difficulty several actors have getting their lines straight; they often seem oblivious to the meaning of their speeches. Fumbled lines and misplaced nuances deprive the satire of much of its humor.

George Ward Byers plays Leonard Charteris, the male apex of the play's triangle, with energy. Caught between two women--an unwanted one who pursues him unrelentingly and a beloved one who affectionately refuses him -- and their bewildered fathers, Byers gracefully prances around the stage sporting engaging facial expressions. But he dandifies his role to the point where it is difficult to understand what the two women could see in him. Lorna Koski, as the woman scorned, strikes the most discordant note in the play. Unsuccessful at portraying Julia's passionate melodramatics, Koski appears to have lost not her decorum and good sense, but her wits. In contrast, the two fathers, played by Jeremiah Riemer and Peter Wirth, are delightfully comfortable in their roles, delivering their lines with spontaneous conviction. As the stupidly hapless doctor to whom Loenard conspires to marry off his adoring nuisance, Robert Stier is nearly perfect.

The set, properties and costumes are a hodgepodge of tailor-made objects and hand-me-downs altered slightly for the play. Their make-shift nature is not a disadvantage. Free from the dazzling technical equipage of the Loeb's main theater, the Ex affords an atmosphere in which an audience can concentrate at close range on the crucial aspects -- the acting and the meaning of the text -- of a difficult play like The Philanderer. In this atmosphere, the experiment at the Ex this weekend, if not completely successful, is worth performing.