Volume 4, Number 11 · July 1, 1965
I'm Laughing But Don't Ask Me Why
By Robert Mazzocco
Square in the Eye Lys
by Jack Gelber
Presented by the Establishment Theatre Company, Inc. at the Theatre de
The Wives
by Lionel Abel
Presented by Theatre: New York at Stage 73
The themes of Jack Gelber's third play concern death and marriage. Significantly, in Square in the Eye, they go together like Scylla and Charybdis. We have characters who cannot act, and action without character. No one's in touch: neither with each other nor themselves. Within a rackety mis-enscène, an arena of fallen idols, we hear of the death of domesticity and of the daily death of belief. Social identity is a mess, religious identity a scream. I'm laughing but don't ask me why, announces someone. No doubt it is Gelber's intention to allegorize America as a schizoid society, a sort of split-level consciousness. Certainly his style serves. On the one hand, pop art epic theater with vaudeville fantasy; on the other, old school psycho-drama. Further, at the Theatre de Lys the whole production is staged like a house afire, and the play is a false alarm.
Review, 1907 words
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