Theatre in Review: Men in White (The Seeing Place)

Men in White occupies a singular place in theatre history: It's the play that saved The Group Theatre. After an initial run of five flops in two years, the soon-to-be-legendary troupe must have been enormously relieved to score a solid success with Sidney Kingsley's hospital drama. One imagines that if Men in White hadn't chalked up its 351-performance run, Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, and quite a few others would have been back to pounding the pavements and -- who knows? -- we might never have gotten to know Clifford Odets.

Seeing Men in White today causes a strange kind of double vision. Looked at one way, it is a charming relic of between-the-wars Broadway; at other times, it is surprisingly modern. Even in the Depression year of 1933, large casts were de rigueur; Men in White has something like 30 speaking parts. (In the original production, Odets and Elia Kazan had small roles opposite such Group Theatre stalwarts as Margaret Barker, Phoebe Brand, Ruth Nelson, Morris Carnovsky, and Luther Adler.) Set in a New York hospital, it is dedicated to showing the life-and-death daily grind that is native to such an institution. Doctors and nurses come and go; crises erupt and are resolved; disputes over treatment break out as split-second decisions must be made. (Kingsley would return to this wide-angle format again, with 1935's Dead End, a kind of social X-ray of the Upper East Side, and 1949's Detective Story, which focused on the comings and goings in a police precinct station.)

The most interesting thing about the play is its view of medicine as an almost spiritual calling. Today, we tend to view doctors as among the privileged few occupying the upper tax brackets, but Kingsley's young interns run themselves ragged in anticipation of careers that promise little in the way of remuneration or social advancement. Furthermore, almost none of these Men in White appear to have a personal life. One doctor, who married and tried to set up a practice, is mired in poverty with a wife who is dying of tuberculosis. George Ferguson, the play's hero, is billed as being of uncommon promise in the operating room; his mentor, Dr. Hochberg, has arranged to send him to Vienna to study under a renowned surgeon. But George has a fiancée, Laura Hudson, who wants him out of the hospital and in an office in a good neighborhood at the first opportunity. (Laura, whose main activity appears to be attending parties, is not presented entirely unsympathetically, but Kingsley makes clear she has no intention of playing second fiddle to the healing arts.) Further complicating the situation is the fact that Laura's wealthy father is joining the board of the cash-strapped hospital and nobody wants to cross him, for fear of losing needed financial support.

This love-vs.-work conflict is the main thread running through Men in White, as George struggles to hold on to Laura and the professional future he envisions for himself. In its weaker moments, Kingsley treats this theme in true Procter and Gamble fashion, throwing George into bed for a one-night stand with Barbara, a needy, insecure nurse, who promptly gets pregnant; somehow George, Barbara, and Laura all end up in the operating room at the same time -- George at work, Barbara on the table, and Laura as a guest observer -- a risible turn of events that seriously undermines the play's message.

Then again, the operation in question is an attempt to repair Barbara's botched abortion. Preparing to operate, Dr. Hochberg all but calls out for a relaxation of the abortion laws, a line that must have been a real shocker in 1933. (Interestingly, an abortion is one of the main plot points of Detective Story; one wonders why it preoccupied Kingsley so much.) Earlier, Dr. Hochberg pretty much calls on society to turn to socialized medicine. (I have a feeling that both of these points were probably omitted when Men in White was turned into a glossy vehicle for Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, with Jean Hersholt -- he of the special humanitarian Oscar -- as Dr. Hochberg.) The script also makes it clear that not all the doctors are heroes; indeed, some are sycophants and hacks. George has a tense battle with a colleague whose recommendations nearly kill a patient, and a scene in which the hiring of a new resident is discussed lays bare the petty politics and money-grubbing that are part of daily life at the hospital.

All of this -- the large cast, the occasionally lumbering plot, the sometimes stilted dialogue -- makes a revival of Men in White something of a tall order. Only the most skilled ensemble -- one with plenty of resources -- should probably attempt it, and even then, the chances of success are likely to be slim. The company known as The Seeing Place has made a brave attempt that cannot be called a success. Under the direction of Erin Cronican, a plausible company acting style has not been found; too many performances are fidgety and filled with extraneous business that disrupt the tempo when what is needed is a highly disciplined approach that orchestrates the many characters and subplots in a unified whole. At this late date, Kingsley's dialogue needs a slightly stylized attack, which is also missing. The lead performers do not get full value out of the central conflict; the battle over George's future is not given the dramatic weight it needs to anchor the play.

This is the first production I have seen at The Seeing Place; the company does not lack for ambition, having in the past taken on Pinter, Chekhov, and Sam Shepard as well as many new works. This very well may be a case of a group of artists getting in over their heads with a work that makes too many demands at once. If you are curious about this rarely seen Pulitzer Prize winner, this is probably your best chance at seeing Men in White, and your curiosity will be probably be rewarded. But be aware that the prognosis for this production is not encouraging.--David Barbour