Sisyphus Agonistes

By T.E. Kalem

THE CHANGING ROOM

by DAVID STOREY

Life is war on the installment plan. With deceptive quietude, that is what David Storey, the most remarkable playwright to come out of England since Osborne and Pinter, has been telling us. The theme comes clear in The Changing Room, which is having its U.S. premiere at New Haven's Long Wharf Theater.

Playgoers and critics alike may be excused for having missed Storey's central concern. In his earlier plays, his spare, meticulous and almost detached naturalism tempted us into thinking that Storey was dealing in slivers of life, when he was actually showing us life being shot away. Almost nothing happens in his plays. Ah, but on any given day, nothing much happens in life or war. In these enterprises, tedium is as certain as death is sure.

What are these segments of mortality as explored by Storey? In Home, Storey told us of the war against old age, quavering forays into the land mines of memory, desperate territorial imperatives like holding on to a chair in the sun at a home for the insane. In The Contractor, which also had its U.S. premiere at the Long Wharf, Storey told of the daily war of work, the campaign that liquidates itself with the setting sun and must be fought again the very next day. Man and his toil--Sisyphus agonistes. Men put up a tent for a wedding party and then take it down. That is all that happens, and it is like watching an entire life unfold and then fold.

If The Changing Room is Storey's most powerful and moving drama, it is because he has found in sport his purest metaphor for the war of existence. The characters are a semi-pro English north country rugby team. Six days of the week, they are peaceable, nondescript employees somewhere. On the seventh day, they gird up their loins for gory combat. The changing room is where they come and go from their catchpenny Armageddon. In Act I, the men perform their initiation rites, strip down, loosen muscles, get into their uniforms. In Act II, they come off the field of combat, boy-toy soldiers, some broken (George Lithgow) all muddy and bloody. In Act III, after a late-minute victory, they are roaring, towel-flipping conventioneers with a communal shower for champagne.

That is all there is, but it is enough to make this the finest new play seen on the North American continent this season, barring a miracle. The reason is not in the plot but in Storey's ability to be as intimate with his characters' hurts, hopes, desires and fighting instincts as an incomparable specialist doing open-heart surgery. The cast cannot be praised singly or too highly. All are Americans, yet their English accents are so authentic that they seem to have been flown in by BOAC. Director Michael Rudman has elicited ensemble acting from this group that rates close to perfect. As for the Long Wharfs artistic director Arvin Brown, he knows viscerally what is good in drama, and season after season he presents it with honesty, professionalism and elan vital. Lincoln Center should beg, borrow or skyjack him.

T.E. Kalem

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