"Honor and the River' at Walnut Studio 3

"To be human is to be vulnerable," announces Eliot, the teenage protagonist, in the soliloquy that opens Anton Dudley's Honor and the River. A moment later Eliot adds, "Who among us is not vulnerable?"

This redundancy is the first tip that we're in for an overwritten evening, notwithstanding an economical set in which a wooden rowing shell doubles as a dining table and the floor serves as a river, not to mention a metaphor for life. For all this clever staging, in fact Dudley is leading us into painfully familiar dramatic territory here.

Eliot, you see, is the sole openly tender and sensitive lad at a New England boys' boarding school dedicated to the ancient macho WASP concept first articulated, I believe, by the Duke of Wellington, i.e., "Don't burden others with your mishigoss." Eliot, it seems, is only too happy to flaunt and even exaggerate his neuroses: At a school whose guiding philosophy is "A healthy mind begins with a healthy body," Eliot professes no interest in sports (even though they're compulsory) and claims he can't even swim.

His schoolmates, and especially his preppy sculling partner, Honor, view Eliot as strange and effeminate, whereas actually he's the only one in touch with his feelings, and actually he can swim, only his father's death by drowning has filled him with revulsion for all things wet, and my gosh, what do you suppose will happen when he inevitably falls in the water?

Overlook, for the moment, the fact that we've trod this prep school ground many times before, in films (like Dead Poets Society and If), plays (Tea and Sympathy) and books (Catcher in the Rye, A Separate Peace, The Rector of Justin). There is still something to be said for a play about a teenager who's strong enough to acknowledge his weaknesses and doesn't give a fig about peer pressure. But Honor and the River takes much too long to develop— it runs two and a half hours, including intermission— and its dramatic turning points struck me as contrived or silly.

Nicholas Park is perfectly cast as the insecure Eliot, and Ellen Tobie is delightful as his straitlaced widowed mother who learns from Eliot that it's fun to open up a bit. Unfortunately, Dudley's script doesn't really let her do any such thing. Kevin Duggin as Honor and Paul L. Nolan as Honor's widowed father have little to do other than react to Eliot.

Dudley's scenario also suffers from two uniquely modern flaws. First, WASPy male New England prep schools no longer exist as such: They've all been overrun with Catholics, Jews, blacks and girls, with consequent changes in their sensibility. Most such schools today would react to Eliot sympathetically and perhaps even approvingly, with appropriate guidance from the school psychologist.

Second, even WASP men today have learned to wear their hearts on their sleeves. Riccardo Muti's farewell Philadelphia Orchestra concert was a virtual festival of demonstrative kissing among heterosexual male movers and shakers— and that was 17 years ago. Just six weeks ago, in front of hundreds of millions of people, George W. Bush publicly hugged his worst rival, Barack Obama, for goodness' sake. Where has Dudley been hiding for the past generation?



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