One of the minor pleasures of Show Boat (to be discussed next month) are the play-within-the-play scenes, of rough-hewn Mississippi audiences engrossed in the hokey old melodramas that chugged their way across the continent for most of the last century. Next week, East Lynne? If only. As the summer tents are folded away and the fall seasons of the regional reps hit their stride, Hammerstein’s affectionate show-within-the-boat spoofs remind you of a lush era when Ol’ Man The’ter, he jus’ kept rollin’ along, week after week, story after story: not just teary tales of distant exotics like Lady Isabel Mount Severn and Sir Francis Levison, but the vast panorama of nineteenth- century life—in 1879, there were forty-nine companies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin alone, and hundreds of lesser dramas of railroads and land claims, sheriffs and preachers, hoboes and drummers. Now, Broadway audiences pay sixty bucks a pop to go to the Gershwin and watch a spectacular high-tech re-creation of hammy Victorian mellers in a revival of Show Boat which is this revivalist season’s late, late wake-up call to the fabulous, slumbering invalid. As an image of theatrical withdrawal, it’s hard to beat.

But it’s not merely a matter of production activity. Where have all the plots and characters, where has all the life gone? Theater today holds a mirror mainly to itself. A few weeks ago, still convalescing from the current Broadway revival, I went to see Damn Yankeesat the Weathervane Theatre, which sits on the