Theater: Flibbertigibberish

Where's Daddy? by William Inge, is another of those plays that everyone has read before it was written. It involves no drama, no personal vision, no character, no insight—just a leaf-through of the dog-eared topics of the day. The evening's menu of fashionable clichés includes: Generations—in conflict. The Young—Jacobins in blue jeans looking for any old Bastille to storm. The Negro—visible and vocal, and there must be two or the producer will be accused of "token" integration. Middle-aged Mothers—so square they are cubes. The Homosexual—not really a bad chap.

Amid eroding plaster and stacked-up cardboard cartons live two newlywedded bohemian idiots, young free-spirited disasters of innocence and honesty. He, execrably played by Beau Bridges, and she, execrably played by Barbara Dana, are about to become parents in name only. Their immediate life plan consists of divorce for themselves, adoption for their unborn child. In intellectual hock to his psychoanalyst, Beau has convinced Barbara that he and she are emotionally unready for parenthood. A hotter squarehead prevails. Hiram Sherman is a proper-minded homosexual, more censorious than Cato the Elder. He has raised Beau since the lad was a 15-year-old pickup in a gay bar, and he is disgusted with Beau's flibbertigibbet irresponsibility. Sherman's performance is an up tick in a dramatic bear market, but he doesn't keep the play from sliding inexorably toward its happy bankrupt ending.

Bad luck comes in threes: the past eight weeks have provided a melancholy chapter in U.S. dramatic history. Tennessee Williams (Slapstick Tragedy), Edward Albee (Malcolm) and William Inge have written by far their worst plays.