HALF THE FUN

A concatenation -- purposefully comic -- of assorted people (who are to become actors unaware) inspires a sixty year old to spark a despondent playwright into producing a play aboard the Condotti, whose stops -- and starts -- induce the same effects among her passengers. Schuyler Van Wert, a cherubic bachelor who cannot keep his hands off others' lives, needles Tony Parker, who has turned his back on Broadway, into an interest in the assortment at hand when they sail from Piraeus:- the mysteriously happy Chavez couple from Bogota; the rebellious Diana Willing; the Lorings from the Middle West and visibly, maritally, irritated; Andre, Count Nadeau, of Paris, woefully in need of assurance; Mrs. Townes and her too greenly ivied son; Mrs. Clipper, ready and willing for any (masculine) age; Herr Otto Schmidt, asking for the exact kind of treatment he receives. Calling at Crete, Bari, Dubrovnik, Split, the Condotti harbors a traitor, for Van Wert, aware that Parker's script does not fit the cast at hand, issues -- or insinuates -- other stage directions and is triumphant, on the approach to Venice, to find he has manipulated the strings admirably. Playfully pointed puppetry.