BACK WHEN I was teaching English Literature I had several touchstones and principles that I passed on to my students. No doubt, those touchstones and principles would nowadays be dismissed as outdated at best and arrogant at worst. They are, nevertheless, what I bring to any work of literature and they remain the bases of my criticism.

      In introducing a class to the novel, the short story, and drama I felt it important to point out the essential difference between a story or simple narrative and a plot. "The king died and then the queen died" is a story; "The king died and then the queen died of grief" is a plot. The essential operator is causative action.

      Further, the elements of plot, character, and setting work in a symbiotic relationship: character often drives plot, plot develops character, setting has an effect on both. The plot is kept taut by a conflict which reaches a point of crisis and the whole comes to a resolution. This resolution is a change in the character, a change in "the way things were" or a simple moment of realization.

      Strong social, political, or religious feelings do not of themselves make a work of art. No matter how heartfelt the author's stimulus for writing the work, unless the piece is framed by these principles, it will fail to achieve the author's intention to involve his/her audience. It is what separates a Les Miserables or a Death of a Salesman from the social "drama" of the Soviet era.

      It is also what separates the stage presentation "Splash Hatch on the E Going Down" from drama. Kia Cothron has gathered elements from modern urban life: exposure to hazardous material, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy, the struggle to preserve the family, and the struggle to make a decent success of one's life. She has presented us with characters we want to like, in a setting of dramatic potential, and strung them together in a series of scenes that, while they progress chronologically, do not do so dramatically. There is story but no plot; there is setting but it is not truly a part of the story; and ultimately, neither the characters nor their problems involve us deeply. They simply do not come alive.

      This is not the fault of the cast. They try valiantly, sometimes too valiantly. but they are unable to involve or move us. In the principal roles of Thyme and Erry, Margaret Kemp and Akili Prince are energetic but skirt the bounds of overacting in their attempt to bring the material to life. Marion McClinton has chosen to direct the play fast and loud, so fast and so loud that many lines are lost in the imperfect acoustics of CenterStage's Head Theater. Lines written as poetry (or at least supercharged prose) are fired off into the girders above, never to be reconstructed by one's inner ear. We want to like these young people. We really do. Unfortunately, Ms. Corthron has left them in two dimensions. Thyme, the young pregnant teenager, is passionately interested in environmental matters and preparing herself for the deliivery of her child under the best of conditions. She is frightfully knowledgeable and articulate about the subjects. That's the problem: she is a preachy bore. Erry, her functionally illiterate husband, is an attractive enough character with the right amount of immaturity and bravado but also with a touching paternal instinct beyond his years. These are apparent contradictions that could have been wonderfully explored in the two hours of performance time. They are presented in snippets and left undeveloped.

      In the roles of Thyme's parents Ami Brasson and Daviid Toney give good, solid performances. Their mature talent helps them bring more life to their parts than the script provides. The performance seems to beathe a little easier when they have the stage. The cast is rounded out by Cherita A. Armstrong as Thyme's girlfriend Shaneequa. I am not quiite able to say what function Shaneequa plays in the story except as a foil to Thyme and to avoid having Thyme tell us the story of her life in a long soliloquy.

      The story revolves around Thyme's self-absorption with the environment and her impending delivery and the need for Erry to have a job with medical benefits. Any confliict or tension arises from the fact that Erry's job in construction exposes him to lead dust and that he develops lead poisoning several months before he is eligible for benefits. In successive vignettes we see him deteriorating and we struggle to care but there is no real dramatic reason to do so. Ms. Corthron has taken characters who could well be real, situations that are real, conflicts that could be dramatic and has simply put dialogue to them. It is a classic case of "The king died and then the queen died."

      There is no crisis point in the story. Things happen in sequence but there is no sense of inevitability or causation. If you listen closely to the closing dialogue between Thyme and her father, you do get the sense that she has undergone a character change. She has begun to shed her self-absorption. Again, though, we hear this. We should see it: that is the idea of drama.

      As a final note: I have puzzled over the names of the characters and the name of the play. When a character has an odd or distinctive name, there should be a reason for it. I can only explain the name Erry. In one of her more didactic moments Thyme is discoursing on Erry's lead poisoning and gives the Latin derivative of the name. She says that it comes from plumbum meaning lead and the suffix erius meaning worker. I wouldn't want to wager how many in the audience caught that leaden hint but I would like to have a dollar for every person who has seen the play and remains clueless as to its title.
                                                                                     -- Peter Matthews