New Play: Blind Love

True or false?—The blind are just like other people except that they can’t see.

True or false?—Mothers are possessive busybodies, but only because they have the best interests of their loved ones at heart.

True or false?—Women are fickle, but they always recognize Mr. Right when he comes along.

One may submit to this true-or-false test by attending the tepid little Broadway comedy called Butterflies Are Free. Playwright Leonard Gershe’s basic plot is an old chestnut, dropping with a slightly pathetic spin: Blind Boy meets Girl, Blind Boy loses Girl, Blind Boy gets Girl.

The boy (Keir Dullea) has just made a brave gesture of self-sufficiency by setting up in his own East Village apartment. The girl (Blythe Danner) lives in the adjoining flat. They meet and bedmate, only to have the boy’s Mom arrive unexpectedly, as Moms expectably do in plays like this. Mom (Eileen Heckart) inspects the setup like a staff officer suddenly assigned to a colonial outpost full of weird natives and primitive sanitary facilities.

Heckart can growl and purr like a baritone sax, and she delivers her lines as if the playwright had delivered the goods. He has not. Gershe is only sporadically funny and never uniquely himself, but simply a one-man situation and gag file.

True to Mom’s worst fears, the girl skitters off with another man before blind love’s final victory. Cast as an aspiring actress, Blythe Danner puts on a studied display of spontaneity with much mannered fuss and fluster. With the lines Keir Dullea has been given, he would be better off mute.