Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut

Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut is one of the least sophisticated shows ever put on at Harvard. And in a community where the standard fare is often overly scholastic and unduly pretentious, this might be viewed as welcome relief. But it should not be; there is a middle ground between boring everyone stiff and pandering to the least common denominator of intelligence that Lute, Flute has not found.

The Harvard Musical Theater Group's first venture is pleasant enough. The cast, under William Jacobson's able direction, is, for the most part, quite talented, and Robert Benson's sets are ingenious. The music, by Arthur Morey and Robert Paul, is not offensive, although with few exceptions it is not wonderful either.

But, spoiled brats that we are, we have come to expect more than a big ball of fluff when we see a show. Lute, Flute is a revue, of course, and it would be unfair to expect it to be fraught with meaning for our time. But as authors, Mr. Morey and Mr. Paul have consistently gone for the easy laugh. Somebody says "Barry Goldwater," and the audience breaks up, the way people used to at the mention of Brooklyn; and everybody feels great because he's in on the joke. But the situation is rarely exploited; brilliant ideas for scenes die as the authors milk the obvious punchline for all it's worth, and then the actors limp off stage.

Among the subjects routinely satirized are the U.N., the Russians, TV commercials, Edward R. Murrow, and fallout shelters. Only a rather childish mind would think calling a Russian girl "Beulah Beulahvich" is funny, but Mr. Morey and Mr. Paul do it anyway in a scene about two Soviets in a satellite. After that howler is repeated, Beulah reads a letter from the government saying. "On Stalin Prize certificate for 1952, read 'Lenin.'" Very funy, or at least it would be if the joke weren't older than the actors. And so it goes, in so many scenes: the tried-and-true, hoary wisecracks.

Yet Lute, Flute is not all bad. The opening number, "Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut," is the best piece of music in the show, and the second scene, a Harvard-Radcliffe dispute between Fran Blakeslee and Morey, contains some extremely clever lyrics. (Unfortunately, the next four scenes are the revue's worst.) The last scene in Act I--a spoof of Gordon Linden--and the three numbers at the end of the show are also successful. "Paradise Permanently Lost," in which an American an Italian, and a Swede try to make a movie out of Milton's work, is particularly fine stuff. The American director, whose girl Friday is aptly named Beth Noir, persists in calling the poet "Jack" Milton, and there are other deft touches.

In the cast Barry Levin, Pat Fay, and Fran Malina stand out. Mr. Levin has good, strong voice and an expressive face. Miss Fay and Miss Malina also can belt it out with the best of them, and what's more, they are good-looking. Like the two other girls, Miss Blakeslee is quite attractive, although she may not be versatile enough for this sort of show; but if she sings louder she will be all right. Gerry Dale is occasionally very funny, and Mr. Morey nearly manages to overcome the fact that he can't quite carry a tune. Mr. Paul, for some reason, became discouraged with the revue during the second act, and declined to show further animation or to sing on key.

The cast, in fact, resuscitates a good bit of the show that would otherwise be so much noise. Mr. Levin and Miss Fay save the shelter scene with some inspired mugging, and Mr. Dale rescues the pathetically bad song, "Unrequited Love," by sheer force of will.

Lute, Flute, Lyre, and Sackbut is a pleasant way to spend an evening, but it is also frustrating, because it could be so much better than it is. If Mr. Morey and Mr. Paul had tried to infuse all the scenes with songs as melodious as the title tune, and with lyrics as scintillating as those in the second number, they would have produced a fine piece of work. But by taking the easy way out, they have created only a big fat fluffball.