RIC NICOL is a syndicated
Vancouver writer who has
won three Stephen Leacock
medals for humor. His first play,
~ Like Father Like Fun, preceded
_ by a successful run in Vancou-
ver, is now playing at the Royal
Alexandra Theatre in Toronto,
prior to a much-anticipated
opening in New York. .
Our stages do not see many
-plays by Canadian writers.
When one comes along, even if

it is only adequate, we naturally”

welcome it. In the present case
exhilaration is difficult, for
though the.comedy is by a Can-
adian and its action is centred
in British Columbia, with the
cast almost all West Coast, Like
Father Like Fun is essentially
in the Broadway tradition. .

Mr. Nicol can hardly expect
us to accept a Canadian imita-
tion of an American commercial
sex confection as a contribution
to Canadian theatre.

Surely, after all these years,
we must realize that our arts
will never amount to much if
we merely emulate the U.S.
image.

ES

Se

Pee eee like Fun

Canadian imitation
of an American |
sex confection

Like Father Like Fun is no
better and not much worse than
dozens of similar bed-time fro-
lics brought to Canadian stages
over the years by literary sex
promoters surrounded by third-
rate road companies from the
States.

It is some kind of a slap in the

-face for Canadians to prove to

them that such meretricious
writing need not be imported.
We can grind it out ourselves;
we have achieved American
know-how by God!

The farce is about a B.C. lum-
ber baron who is disappointed
in his 18-year-old son. The boy
is stodgy, he doesn’t sleep
around. Papa wants to cure him
and arranges to have a lady
artist seduce him and thus Make
a Man of Him! '

The pattern from here on is
pretty predictable and Mr. Nicol
doesn’t deviate from it: The se-
ductress, the bedroom (offstage),
the closed-circuit TV seduction
coverage, and a good deal of
dialogue, mostly about sex. Sex

gags. Sex puns. Sex allusions.
Sex.

Let us be clear about this: Sex
meed not be a taboo subject on
the stage. What one objects to
is the smirking, the juvenile
double meanings, the sort of
risque wise-cracks that seek out

_the babbits and the yahoos in an ©

audience and evoke the yok-yok
laughter and the stag-party
snicker.

If Mr. Nicol had more than
just tentatively explored the
social environment of his char-
acters, he could have given us
a good play. But instead of so-
cial satire he delivers slapsticks;
instead of a few meaty ideas we
get beer-parlor banalities.

When Mr. Nicol does, how-
ever, choose to comment on
people and events, we are re-
galed with a number of speeches
and postures ridiculing Com-
munists, liberals, “beatnicks,”
anti-imperialists, Chinese com-
munes and the like. The status
quo soul of every Colonel Blimp
(including his legitimate heirs)
is surely delighted.

Even as farce (and good farce

can be entertaining) Like Fa-
ther Like Fun tends to be pedes~
trian; it’s just too slow for the”
medium. It is not really funny 4
all, because there is little gem
ine laughter in the basic treat
ment, The comedy is not orgal
ic; it depends mainly on gags —

Malcolm Black’s direction suf
fered from two extremes: The
action was, on the one hand, t0
deliberate for: farce and, on
other, too sketchy for farc®
There is altogether too much
mugging, too many _ secon 2
takés, too many comic stil
stances, too much unconsciou
“camp,” too many leaps in t
air, too much skipping about PY —
Ed McNamara and Roy Shumat
too many stereotypes by Dott
Buckingham, Reid Anderso#
Sylvia Feigel and Patricia Gage

I don’t think the actors, U%
doubtedly effective under n0F
mal circumstances, should hav@
been compelled to indulge
such corny capering and such
supine stances, Surely, some
where, a human rights commis”
sion must intervene.

N EXHIBITION of scupture
and drawing by Henry
Moore has given the Czech

public its first opportunity to
appreciate the work of one of
the greatest European artists of
today.

The exhibit is showing in
Prague through the cooperation
of the Prague National Gallery
and the British Art Council.

The exhibit consists of rough-
ly 40 pieces of sculpture and 40
drawings and also covers rough-
ly 40 years of the sculptor’s
work, from the massive “Mother
and Child” of 1924 and the “Girl
With Clasped Hands” of 1930,
with their emphasis on mass and
material, to the
Piece” (Archer) of 1964, the
‘knife-edge’ compositions, and
the “Reclining Mother and
Child” of 1960-61, which perhaps
reduces the human figures to
their purest essence of form.

The drawings are well-display-
ed in the long room of the Na-
tional Gallery’s Sternberk Pa-
lace.

The air-raid shelter sequence
forms a unified document testi-
fying to profound human under-
standing as well as to draughts-
manship and composition.

An excellent feature of the ex-

“Three-Way —

Prague views Moore's abstracts

Eventually, a Henry Moore sculpture will adorn the square in
front of Toronto’s new city hall. (Some people feel “clutter up”
would be a better way to put it.) Undoubtedly, the sculpture will
be an even bigger object of controversy after it arrives than it has
been up to now. Tribune readers may be interested in becoming ac-
quainted with some of the views of the public in Czechoslovakia to
a Moore exhibit currently showing there. The accompanying article
is reprinted (abridged) from Prague News Letter.

* hibition is the series of panels

giving some of the artists’ own
statements about art and his
own work, documented with
photographs.
Thus we can see in their con-
text Moore’s remarks about
Brancusi and his liberation of
the sculptor from accretions of
pure form, with examples both
of Brancusi’s work and that of
Moore’s, in which he ackno‘yl-
edges the former’s influence.

Similarly the influence of old
Mexican sculpture on Moore’s
treatment of mass is strikingly
shown, perhaps the beginning of
his interest in the reclining fig-
ures,

This treatment is particularly
valuable as an illustration of

Moore’s use of natural forms, ~

pebbles, bones, and even the un-
conscious recollection of rocks
known in childhood and repeat-
ed in work half a dentury later.

Several of the larger and bet-

ter known pieces of sculpture
are shown in the garden of the
palace, which is in keeping with
Moore’s style and intention.

The “Standing Figure” (knife-
edge) of 1961 is well-placed in
that the visitor approaches. it
from the length of the garden;
even the “Warrior With Shield”
(1953-54), which was the result
of Moore’s Greek journey and

‘his reconciliation with the inten-

tions and achievements of classi-
cal antiquity in sculpture, perch-
ed as it is on the end of the wall,
is not out of its element.

The “Large Torso” (Arch) as-
sumes rather more homely pro-
portions than in its native set-
ting, and so indeed does the
“Upright Motif No. Eight.”

The charming intimacy of this
garden, shaded as it is by trees
in full leaf, also detracts from
the play of light which has its
function in Moore’s conception
of “sculpture in depth.”

It is particualrly a loss for the
gaunt “king and queen”’ figures,
who need to be seen on the
horizon of sweeping moors, or _
at least on the slope of the
Dales; here, in the vicinity of
magnificent tall trees and in the
dappled shade of beeches, the.
piece loses its impressiveness.

Yet even so, the beauty and
the moving power of Moore’s
sculpture cannot fail to impress.
The sense of form, of hidden
laws that the sculptor can bring
to the surface of matter and ex-
press in terms comprehensible to
the layman—for this, society

* owes a debt to the artist which

it has yet to find an adequate
means of paying

July 29, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pa