THE STORY: At a small college with virtually no admission requirements, two aging professors deal differently, but disastrously, with the students whose S.A.T. scores are lower than their cholesterol counts—and with their own obsolescence. Victor Ransome has long since given up cajoling his classes into paying attention and now uses insults and threats of physical violence. “I can kill you if I want,” he tells a student, “I’ve got tenure.” His best—well, only—friend, Murray Stone, still loves teaching, primarily because it fosters his delusions of perpetual youth. Through their offices come a variety of aggravations in the persons of a completely bewildered baseball player, a smitten spinster, and a gorgeous business major, each of whom serve to remind them that in education come various human responsibilities which sometimes supersede actual teaching. By play’s end, Murray has understood this lesson. Victor, however, has not, and is, in fact, quite dead. His death underscores the message at the bottom of the play: that teaching, like living, takes continual reinvestment. As Murray puts it, “Happiness is an act of will.” While the play makes considerable fun of the state of modern American education, and speculates on the collapse of western civilization once the next generation assumes control of it, in the end, it is a positive statement for teaching, and for teachers.
An often touching, yet not so gentle look at the mid-life crises of two professors at a small Southwestern college.
