The Theatre Book Of The Year 1947 1948 A Record And An Interpretation

792 T362 1947/481(2)

REFERENCE USE ONLY

liit^ir^ii^r^ir^^

'"'Books' on the Theatre
by George Jean Nathan

Mr. Nathan, who is the authority on the American theatre and
drama for the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Britannica
Book of the Year, has published the following books on the
subjects:

Testament of a Critic

Art of the Night

The House of Satan

The Autobiography of an Attitude

Since Ibsen

Land of the Pilgrims' Pride

Materia Critica

Comedians All

The Popular Theatre

The Critic and the Drama

The Theatre, the Drama, the Girls

The World in Falseface

Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents

Another Book on the Theatre

The Avon Flows

Passing Judgments

The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan

The Theatre of the Moment

The Morning after the First Night

Encyclopedia of the Theatre

The Entertainment of a Nation

The Theatre Book of the Hear, 1942-43

The Theatre Book of the Year, 1943-44

The Theatre Book of the Year, 1944-45

The Theatre Book of the Year, 1945-46

The Theatre Book of the Year, 1946-4*]

The Theatre Book of the Year
1947(^^1948

The THEATRE Book

OF THE YEAR

1947 1948

A Record and an Interpretation

B Y

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

ALFRED ^^^ A. KNOPF

NEW YORK : 1948

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK,
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. *

Copyright 1948 by George Jean Nathan. All rights reserved. No part of this
book may "be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a
review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the
United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada by The
Ryerson Press.

FIRST EDITION

Foreword

-I- OLLOWERS OF THESE annual surveys are, I fear, some-
times disturbed by their degree o critical dispraise. That
the detraction often exceeds the commendation I regret-
fully am forced to admit. But, if my point of view is
thought to have any merit, I see no way out of the dilemma.
The fact is that genuine worth in our theatre in the last
few years has been of no noticeable bulk, that the great ma-
jority of new plays have been devoid of quality, and that,
so far as I am concerned, that seems to be the only proper
manner in which to report on them.

I well appreciate that, whatever may be cynically said to
the contrary, praise is always more popular than blame.
The critic so constituted that he can find good miscellane-
ously is consequently esteemed far above the one so pe-
culiarly constituted that he can find it only where it actu-
ally exists. It is my misfortune in this respect that I was
born under an unpropitious star. As a result, I am not, I
grieve, approved as I should be; I am not invited to serve
on more than fifty or so of the usual hundred committees
to save the theatre; I have not been vouchsafed a seat at a
banquet chicken and its collateral string beans for some
years; and I am not overburdened with boodle.

But, desolate as I find myself and yearn as I do for the
admiring plaudits of the masses, I can do naught but pur-
sue my haplessly inoculated and depressing course. If you
think that I take any secret pleasure in it, you are mis-
taken; I say freely that I get little or no comfort from it.
Like everyone else I wish for a theatre all of whose plays
and productions would be such that my writings on them
would be as warmly acceptable as currently are those of
some of my venerated and envied colleagues. But, since

v |. Foreword

any such theatre seems to exist only in the latter's over-
active" initiations, I suspect that I must patiently wait
for the Realization of my prayer and in the meantime
comment on it as it happens to be. If, therefore, the pro-
portion of eulogy to condemnation is out of balance, I
seek apology and maybe even absolution in the circum-
stances.

It is not, surely, that I am so vain as to believe that my
opinion is usually right and that of others usually wrong,
though I confess a lamentable suspicion now and then tor-
tures me. It is rather that, right or wrong, I can not see any
sense or virtue in the profession of criticism, after more
than forty years in its service, if it does not at all times, let
the chips fall where they will, perform its offices with only
the strictest standards in mind, with no slightest compro-
mise in the misguided interests of a periodically sick and
needy theatre, and with indifference to any reader reaction
either favorable or unfavorable. That I accordingly must
often seem a little hard and even odious to those given in
all things to the light that shines in charity's eyes is un-
avoidable. But I certainly am very far from offering myself
in the greasepaint role of martyr. I am no more a martyr
than I am a crusader, an evangelist, or a genius. I am
merely a commentator with, I hope, some possibly rational
critical overtones. That many people disagree with my find-
ings is a pleasure I am not one to deny them. That a few
may agree only dooms them with me in any politely opti-
mistic society.

The theatrical year covered in the following pages was
all in all an indifferent one and, since a succession of un-
complimentary chapters would be tedious, I have tried
where possible to make them readable apart from their
dire content and even now and again extrinsically divert-
ing, much as the entrepreneur of an old small-time vaude-
ville bill distracted his customers from its monotony by de-
liberately letting a member of the trained dog act jump
over the footlights, run into the auditorium, and bite the
candy-butcher in the leg. The relatively few opportunities
I have enjoyed for praise I have taken full advantage of,

Foreword vii

and with deep personal satisfaction and gratitude, since
they have served to lighten the strain by providing green
oases in the ploughed-up desert.

Here, then, is the theatrical season of the years of Our
Lord 1947 and 1948 as seen through the eyes of your chron-
icler. The record speaks, though ventriloquially, for itself.

Contents

Foreword v

Honor List 1

The Year's Productions 3

Especially Interesting Performances 369

Index: Plays i

Index: Authors and Composers iii

The Theatre Book of the Year
1947^^1948

The Year's Productions

THE TELEPHONE and THE MEDIUM

MAY i, 1947

Short operas by dan-Carlo Menotti. Produced by Chan-
dler Cowles and Efrem Zimbalistj Jr., in association with
Edith Luytens for 6 monthf performances in the Barry-
more Theatre.

PROGRAM

THE TELEPHONE
LTJCY Marilyn Cotlow \ BEN Frank Rogier

THE MEDIUM

MONICA Evelyn Keller

TOBY Leo Coleman

MADAME FLORA ( BAB A )

MRS. GOBINEAU Beverly Dame
MR. GOBINEAU Frank Rogier

MRS. NOLAN Virginia Beeler

Marie Powers

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in Madame Flora's parlor, in
our time. Act I. Evening. Act II. Evening, a few days later.
Director: Gian-Carlo Menotti.

TO MUSIC initiatedly composed and sometimes tech-
nically interesting, if Puccini influenced, over-all scarcely
distinguished and nothing to induce prolonged critical
pause, The Medium, with its libretto o a fraudulent spir-
itualist who terrifiedly falls under the spell of her own chi-
canery, periodically projects a dramatic chill seldom expe-
rienced from the so-called thrillers of Broadway commerce.
So effective in this quarter is the two-act opera in consider-
able part that it is to be regretted that the author-compos-
er's imagination does not more fully suffice him. The st-
ance in which the charlatan, aided by her daughter and a
mute. gypsy boy whom she has adopted, plays on the emo-

4 The Telephone and The Medium

tions of clients who seek communion with their dear de-
parted has a cruel irony that grips. So, too, have the scenes
in which the conniving medium suddenly goes pale at the
feel of a ghostly hand at her throat and in which she is be-
set by the same spooky fears which she has sold for gain to
her susceptible trade. But the mood collapses when, in her
frenzied determination to lay the ghost within herself, she
shoots into a closet out of which presently tumbles the
dead body of her mute confederate. This makes little dra-
matic sense, unless one ruptures one's mental powers. The
ghost-slaying idea would have been more relevant to the
theme and much more significant had the dead body been
made that of the medium herself in replica.

Under the immediate general circumstances it is occa-
sionally difficult to decipher Menotti's dramatic intention.
There are times when it seerns that he is attempting to pic-
ture the indissolubility of the real and the spirit worlds.
There are other times when he appears to be trying to para-
phrase the Frankenstein theme. And there are still others
when what he is up to seems to be the philosophical de-
spair that only in silence (as represented by the mute) is
there to be found paradoxically the Sphinxian answer to
the riddle of the unknowable, a thesis perhaps more no-
table for its nonsense than for its profundity. Music natu-
rally comes to his aid in his confusion and he makes val-
uable dramatic use of it. But what might have been a
consistently eerie excursion into the metaphysic of Piran-
dello becomes now and then muddled through an unclear
and unsustained fancy.

The one-act The Telephone, which is offered as a cur-
tain-raiser and which spoofs the nuisance that the instru-
ment can be, is intermittently ingenious in a musical di-
rection, particularly in its humorous orchestrations, but in
the aggregate forced, much too long, overdone, and tire-
some. The first time the telephone interrupts the swain's
proposal of marriage, the idea is entertaining enough, but,
as the business goes on and on, what amusement there ini-
tially was gradually fades and expires.

Though Menotti, judging solely from the two exhibits

May 1, 1947 5

I am not familiar with his Amelia Goes To The Ball,
The Island God, The Old Maid And The Thief, or Sebas-
tian seems partly to share with various of his fellow
moderns a doubt of melody, or at least anything that too
closely approaches it, he fortunately does not join their ec-
centricity in an avoidance of emotion. Altogether too much
of the music of these moderns sounds as if it had been con-
ceived and composed by their mothers-in-law. Menotti's
agreeably strives for some warmth, feeling, and passion.
There is in it, also, whatever its shortcomings, the sugges-
tion of a nimble intellect, whether light, as in The Tele-
phone, or serious, as in The Medium.

The voices are acceptable enough, though Marie Pow-
ers' in the medium's role suffers from what seems to be a
slight lisp, and Evelyn Keller's, in that of her daughter,
from a periodic tendency to shrillness. The acting, how-
ever, is another matter. While perhaps not any more criti-
cizable than much of that at the Metropolitan, it is at its
best, save for Leo Coleman's performance of the mute, ei-
ther uncomfortably self-conscious, as in the instance, par-
ticularly, of Marilyn Cotlow and Frank Rogier in The
Telephone, or of a piece with the wood winds minus the
wind. The physical production of The Medium calls, how-
ever, for favorable words. Though obviously economical,
Horace Armistead's setting and Jean RosenthaTs lighting
are considerably superior to three-fourths of the expensive
kind of thing we generally get in the Broadway theatre.

6

HEADS OR TAILS. MAY 2, 194?

A comedy by S. /. Lengsfelder and Ervin Drake. Produced
by Jour Theatre, Inc., for 29 performances in the Cort
Theatre.

PROGRAM

CORNELIUS T. SHELDON

Lies Tremayne

AMY Lulu BeUe Clarke

HELEN SHELDON Audra Lindley
BURTON SNEAB Joseph Silver

FRANK JONES Gregory Robbing
MARION GCLMORE Lucie Lancaster
ALICE MTLFORD Jean Cobb

PHILIP McGmc- Jed Prouty

SYNOPSIS; Act I. Scene 1. The terrace of the country home of
Cornelius Sheldon. Saturday morning. Scene 2. Barney McGill's office.
Several days later. Act II. Scene 1. The terrace. Afternoon of the same
day. Scene 2. The MUford living-room. "Wednesday evening. Act III. The
terrace. The 13th of the month, Cornelius's birthday; late afternoon.

Director: Edward F. CUne.

BARNEY McGiLL Ralph Simone
ERIC PETERSEN Werner Klemperer
MRS. WARREN ' Lelah Tyler

ERNEST MTLFORD Joseph Graham
MR. GREEN Anthony Gray

SENOR COSTAAIABO Frank de Kova
HUMFERPINCK Eichard Barron
McNuLTY Paul Lipson

T

JL.HI

.HE PROGRAM announced that Mr. Lengsfelder, of whom
no one locally had ever, before heard and whose name was
to be searched for in the European records in vain, "has
had more than forty successful productions to his credit."
The successful productions were thus perhaps scarcely con-
nected with the theatre and, if not purely a figment of the
press-agent's imagination, were possibly babies, though
that, too, is doubtful if the gentleman's biological fertility
was to be estimated in proportion to his dramatic. Noth-
ing worse than his theatrical offspring has been suffered by
the stage in years. A portion of the blame is possibly to be
borne by the collaborator whom he summoned to his as-
sistance. This gentleman, according to the same program,
was "a special material writer for Milton Berle and other
top comedians*' and his function seemed to be to insert
jokes into Mr. Lengsfelder's script whenever it called for

May 2, 1947 7

some humor, which was not only often but always. Since
the jokes were of the vintage species of the one about the
couple celebrating their twentieth anniversary and were
now going to get married, it appeared that Mr. Lengs-
felder should have looked somewhat farther afield for an
auxiliary genius.

The plot had to do with two men in love with the same
woman, their toss of a coin to determine which would com-
mit suicide and leave the way clear for the other, and the
efforts of an insurance broker who had insured the loser to
forestall his self-destruction. The writing sounded as if it
had been dictated by one backward tot to another; the act-
ing was even worse than the direction, which was morbid;
and the settings by Watson Barrett looked as if he had read
the script and had decided to get even. The enterprise was
predicated on a profit sharing plan, dreamed up by the
metaphysical Mr. Lengsfelder, which promised each ticket
purchaser his proportionate share of the financial rewards.
The program again confided that "after overcoming ini-
tial obstacles, enthusiastic response greeted the plan, so
that Your Theatre, Inc., has over three thousand subscrib-
ers and one hundred and forty-two church and civic organ-
izations." After the first act, those of the suckers who were
present catapulted themselves out of the theatre to consult
their solicitors on the possibility that their sharing con-
tracts did not contain non-assessment clauses.

RESPECTFULLY YOURS. MAY 13, 1947

A comedy by Peggy Lamson. Produced by the Blackfr tars'
Guild for 14 performances in the Blackfriars 3 Theatre.

PROGRAM

LYDIA GREENLEAF Anne FoUmann
ALEX GREENLEAF Kevin UcCloskey
DORIS Mary Morgan

CARL GREENLEAF Clifford West
CONNIE GREENLEAF Doris Sward
ALAN WALKER Henry Hart

MRS. Mcd-AiN Ethel Kenney

MR. MCCLAIN Owen Dickson

PHOTOGRAPHER Allen Stapleton
Miss RIGGS May Burkan

WILLIAM VAN NESS Alfred Reitty
Miss VINSON Jean Emslie

The scene is the Greenleafs living-room, Cambridge, Mass.

Time: 1912.

Director: Marjorie H&dreth.

I

,N THE six years of its existence, the Blackfriars* Guild has
produced twenty-three plays more or less experimental in
nature. With this, its twenty-fourth production, it aban-
doned, for reasons best known to itself, anything of an even
remotely experimental character and went minor Broad-
way with a wholly conventional whistle-stop comedy that
had been presented for failure three years before, under
the title, Bee In Her Bonnet, in a Southern road town and
on which options had subsequently been taken by several
Broadway producers, also for reasons best known to them-
selves, but who soon thereafter dropped them, for reasons
now best known to everybody.

The theme of the waif script is the trouble brought upon
a Harvard professor in the painfully respectable campus
atmosphere of thirty-five years ago by his wife's publication
of a pre-Dale Carnegie opuscle called How To Command
Respect At Home. Since in the thirty-five year period
elapsed we have had a sufficient number of exhibits in
which the publication of something or other has brought
embarrassment in its train, the idea has become pretty

May 13, 1947 9

tired and would need considerable wit and humor to revi-
talize it. These Miss Lamson does not sufficiently com-
mand, and her play dies in its tracks half an hour after it
gets under puffing way.

10

PORTRAIT IN BLACK. MAY 14, 1947

A so-called pyschological thriller by Ivan Goff and Ben
Roberts. Produced by David Lowe and Edgar F. Lucken-
bach for 61 performances in the Booth Theatre.

PROGRAM

COB O'BRIEN Barry Kelley

TANIS TALBOT Claire Luce

GRACES McPHEE Mary Michael
PETER TALBOT David Anderson
WINIFRED TALBOT

Dorothea Jackson

RUPERT MARLOWE

Sidney Blackmer

DR. PFTTTTP GRAHAM Donald Cook
BLAKE RITCHIE Thomas Coley

SYNOPSIS: The entire action of the play takes place in the draw-
ing-room of the Talbot home in San Francisco. Act I. Scene 1. An autumn
afternoon. Scene 2. The following morning. Act II. Scene 1. Three nights
later. Scene 2. Three days later, afternoon. Act IH. The same night.

Director: Reginald Denham.

J[HE DEMAND most often imposed upon the spectator by
one of these psychological thrillers is, first, that his psycho-
logical education shall have bloomed and stopped with the
"You can't pull that trigger" scene in Augustus Thomas'
The Witching Hour and, secondly, that his spine shall be
of the sort which curdles in inverse ratio to the amount of
a stage's illumination. I do not wish to pose as the posses-
sor of either a knowledge of the science that would have
shaken Freud to his foundations or of a backbone that is
impervious to titillation, at least of sorts, but the average
play of the kind none the less ever impresses me as a book
on psychology for freshman classes with a cap pistol hidden
in it. I do not say that what little psychology there is in the
plays may not sometimes be sound enough. I only say that
it is so childishly elementary that to label it with the high-
sounding scientific term is like calling Peg o f My Heart an
analytical treatise on love. What is more, there is generally
not so much of it in any such play as you will find in even
a run-of-the-mill Broadway comedy. The thrills, further-

May 14, 1947 11

more, are usually little other than fabricated feather-
tickles. They do not operate toward the spine through the
mind but merely shout "Boo!" at the juvenile sensibilities,
As drama, they have no more authenticity than the drop-
ping of a tin tray behind a vaudeville comedian; they are
fright-wigs pulled by strings attached to typewriters.

The Messrs. Goffs and Roberts' version of the toy mech-
anism has to do with a jezebel and her doctor lover who
conspire to insert a lethal needle into the chronic invalid
who is the former's husband and thus clear the way for
their joint passion. An anonymous letter shortly informs
them that someone else is privy to their misdeed. In their
dread of being unmasked, they do away with a male visitor
to the house whose manner seems to indicate that it was he
who dispatched the missive. But no sooner has he been
murdered than comes still another anonymous letter. After
a number of scenes between a pair of comedy servants and
a pair of young lovers, lugged in to lend the ulcerated pro-
ceedings some relief and, even more obviously, to kill time,
it is disclosed that the letters were written by the psycho-
pathic hussy herself, her explanation being that she feared
she might lose the love of the medico and sought this means
to keep him, in his terror, close to her.

Since, among other things, the woman wrote and sent
the first letter immediately following the murder of her
husband and since her accomplice was at the time pro-
foundly enamoured of her and apparently could not be
drawn away from her by a team of horses, plausibility gets
its first blow. Since it is more than obvious that the bed-
ridden husband, who is stated not to have had married re-
lations with his wife for almost ten years, could not have
stood in the way of the lovers, who were demonstratedly
very hot not only under their collars, plausibility gets its
second. Since, subsequently, the medico, who is presented
as a shrewd and observing creature, would readily from the
jade's actions have quickly seen through her, his long delay
in using his eyes in that quarter gives plausibility its third.
And since all kinds of plays like the previous season's Little
A have instructed audiences in suspecting cheating wives

12 Portrait in Black

twenty minutes after the curtain has gone up, interest in
the whole gets its first, second, third, and knockout.

The present dramaturgy follows the customary pattern
of throwing suspicion on a sinister butler, having the fright-
ened small son o the household intrude upon the scene
immediately following the crack of a murderous revolver
("There's nothing wrong, dear; go back to bed") , arousing
a character's suspicions upon his casual discovery of some-
thing that has been thrown into a grate fire, introducing a
ringing of the telephone bell in the midst of the twain's
second malfeasance and the cautious removal of the re-
ceiver from the hook, etc. The dialogue is alternately ei-
ther of a rhetorical elegance ("What love is this that feeds
on death?") or of the cliche sort sufficiently suggested by "I
love you" "You don't even know the meaning of the
word!" and (shades of Mrs. Dane's Defence) "I was young;
I didn't know; he took advantage of my innocence." A last
minute change reduced the play from three acts to two,
which was the only improvement upon the species any-
where perceptible.

That the enterprise was doomed to commercial failure
should have been known to its sponsors, and for a reason
producers of greater practical experience would have ap-
preciated. A melodramatic thriller whose general tone is
depressing, as in this case, is inevitably headed for the store-
house. The successes have always been those whose mur-
ders are paradoxically exhilarating.

The stage direction, while intermittently satisfactory, re-
lied too greatly on slow motion, long pauses, and dread
lookings into space to induce a sense of trepidation in the
audience. Claire Luce, in the hussy role, though an im-
proved actress, was furthermore permitted such an excess
of cold postures and refrigerated hauteur that her doctor
lover, suavely played by Donald Cook, would have had to
prescribe allopathic doses of yohimbin and mustard plas-
ters before enjoying relations with her. The rest of the
company pursued the conventional acting design of such
plays so closely that they could have stepped without re-
hearsal into any one o a dozen of them.

IS

LOVE FOR LOVE. MAY *6, 1947

A revival of the comedy by William Congreve, with inci-
dental music by Leslie Bridge-water. Produced by the The-
atre Guild and John C. Wilson in association with H. M.
Tennent Ltd. for 48 performances in the Royale Theatre.

PROGRAM

VALENTINE

JEREMY

SCANDAL

TATTLE

MRS. FRAIL

FORESIGHT

ROBIN

NURSE

John Gielgud

Richard Wordsworth

George Hayes

Cyril Rttchard

Adrianne AUen

John Kidd

Donald Bain

PMippaGffl

ANGELICA

Pamela 3rown

SIR SAMPSON LEGEND

Malcolm Keen

MRS. FORESIGHT
MissPauE

Marian Spencer
Jessie Evans

BEN
BUCKRAM

Robert Flernyng
Sebastian Cabot

JENNY

Mary Lynn

SYNOPSIS: The scene is London. 1695. Act I. Scene 1. Valen-
tine's lodgings. Morning. Scene 2. Foresight's house. The same dag. Scene
3. The same. The same evening. Act II. Scene 1. Valentine's lodgings. The
next morning. Scene 2. Foresight's house. Later in the day.

Director: John Gielgud.

J

OHN GIELGUD AND co. followed their excellent display of
The Importance Of Being Earnest with, if not an equally
excellent production of a shortened version of the Con-
greve comedy, at least what in major part was a very good
one. That English actors are admirably adapted to such ar-
tificial comedy is hardly remarkable and is much like say-
ing that American actors are admirably adapted to com-
edies like The Fall-Guy and Is Zat So? Or that Russian
actors are thoroughly at home in Chekhov, German in
Hauptmann, Austrian in Schnitzler, and Chinese in Kao-
Tsi-ch'ing. When a critic puts such thoughts down on pa-
per, it simply means that he is hopefully marking time un-
til something a little fresher, livelier and more piquant
pops into his head. Meanwhile, he consoles himself that
the statement, which has survived the years, is anyway per-
fectly safe and uncontradictable, which is something in a

14. Love for Love

day when one of the greatest of American indoor sports
seems to be dispatching letters to critics arguing that they
are first cousins to the jackass and might profitably be sent
back to criticizing their sires.

The next step in the critic's procedure, i he hasn't too
early a deadline, is to worry out a more or less novel reason
why the English actors are so aptly fitted for the kind of
comedy in question* Having several times before written
that it is because they themselves are often personally of
an artificial identity with the characters and hence suited
naturally to their portrayal, he can not well repeat himself,
because there is nothing his readers like better than to^ de-
tect such repetitions and to argue from them that he is just
where he was years ago and should be retired for arrested
development. Having also observed a number of times that
it is because the British actors articulate so precisely, are
possessed of the appropriate brittle personalities, and are
physically remote from the normal masculine biological re-
alism (Love For Love was in one period played by an all-
female cast) , he appreciates that that will not do either.
True as it may be, it is stale, and the primary business of
readable criticism is to eschew the stale, or at least so in-
geniously to garb it in new habiliments that it will not
seem so. Anyone can write the truth but, when everybody
already knows it, it takes some nose-scratching to present it
in a fashion that will make the reader believe he is getting
it for the first time. Shaw's trick has been defined as stating
the obvious in terms of the scandalous. An even harder
one is to state the obvious in terms of the seemingly pro-
found.

I have sat here now for all of several hours trying to fig-
ure out a way to flimflam the reader by writing the same
old thing in a manner to make him imagine that he is get-
ting something piping hot off the griddle. But I am balked.
I can't do it, at least not at the moment. I have thought of
dressing up the reason why these English are better than
any other at such artificial comedy in the argument that
the latter is so wholly indigenous to their own land. But a
second's reflection shows that that is silly, as this Congreve,

May 26, 1947 15

though born in England, was since infancy by training, ed-
ucation and process of thought Irish. It is also silly because
the finest interpreter of the indigenously English Shake-
speare was an Italian, the best interpreter of the indelibly
Russian Tolstoi an Austrian, and the greatest interpreter
of the French Dumas and Sardou, to say nothing of the
German Sudermann, an actress born in a railway carriage
on the road from Venice to Vigevano. I have also thought
of toying with the observation that the reason may lie in
the ingrained emotional chill of the Englishman which
makes him a natural funnel for unemotional comedy. But
though I have not seen it expressed in just that way be-
fore, it is a little too manifest and hence unworthy of the
self-esteemed critical talents of your servant. And I have
further meditated arguing that the reason may be that the
affectation and insincerity of artificial comedy find their
most convincing exponents in Englishmen who themselves
seem to be constitutionally invested with affectation and
insincerity, or at least the satisfactory semblance thereof.
But though that may often appear to be true, it surely is
not always true, since there have been English actors of a
different chop who have been thoroughly acceptable in the
same type of comedy.

So let us forget the whole matter, at any rate until I can
think up something better.

It is rather late in the day to enter into any extensive dis-
cussion of the familiar, wittily bawdy and diverting, if here
and there sometimes halting, Congreve play, or of its bril-
liant author. Though on a level far below his masterpiece,
The Way Of The World, and materially inferior to his The
Old Bachelor, and though it occupies third place in his
canon of five plays, it nevertheless offers a comedy of man-
ners which, despite its emphasis on plot, has contributed
notably to the gallery of humorous character. Not humor-
ous in the generally accepted sense, it should be reminded,
but, in the author's words, humor which is "a singular and
unavoidable manner of doing or saying anything, peculiar
and natural to one character only, by which his speech
and actions are distinguished from other characters."

16 Love for Looe

Though the much finer The Way Of The World was on
its initial production a failure both popularly and criti-
cally, Love For Love was a substantial success, which goes
to show that the public and the majority of critics of one
century are often much like those of another. Now as then,
both usually share an affection for plot and are uncom-
fortable without it. Now as then, both have a disrelish for
subtle shadings and prefer not the delicate but the more
highly flavored. Both, too, still today with rare exception
have a greater taste for direct humor than for sly wit, and
have difficulty in detecting and appreciating genuine style
when they come upon it. And both persist in their appetite
for what John Palmer calls lightly running dialogue
"written, as it seems, joyously, currente calamo" along
with the "tumbling comedy" favored by Wycherley, and
view with less regard dialogue of calmer distinction.

But if public and critics have not much changed, nei-
ther have playwrights, at least in one respect. Now as then,
they still become wroth at adverse criticism. If such as
Maxwell Anderson, Lillian Hellman and others presently
give the critics a piece of their minds, so did Congreve
when they failed to approve of one of his comedies. ''Give
me leave," he testily wrote in his dedication of the play to
Charles Montague, "to tell my illiterate critics, as an an-
swer to their impotent objections, that they have found
fault with that which has been pleasing to you. . . . They
were not long since so kind to a very imperfect comedy of
mine that I thought myself justly indebted to them in all
my endeavors for an entertainment that might merit some
little of that applause which they were so lavish of when I
thought I had no title to it. But I find they are to be treated
cheaply, and I have been at an unnecessary expense."

The worst of it was that on this particular occasion >
the play was The Double Dealer the critics strangely
happened to be right, as Congreve himself apparently came
later to agree when he scissored the indictment from his
literary records*

Though Gielgud's Valentine, admirable in the earlier
portions of the revival, tended to become a trifle listless in

May 26, 1947 17

the later, most of his support was In pretty trim, notably
Cyril Ritchard, a capital Tattle; Pamela Brown, one of the
best of the younger actresses England has lately sent across
the waters, in the role of Angelica; and, as Miss Prue, Jes-
sie Evans, a rowdy comedienne of the Joyce Redman cut.
The settings by Rex Whistler, the costumes by Jeannetta
Cochrane, and the stage lighting by William Conway
added further to the satisfaction of the evening.

18

ICETIME OF 1948. MAY 28, 1947

An ice skating show, with tunes and lyrics by James Little-
field and John Fortis. Produced by Sonja Henie and Ar-
thur W. Wirtz for 10 months 9 performances in the Center
Theatre.

CAST

Freddie Trenlder, Joe Jackson, Jr., Skippy Baxter, Joan Hyldoft, the
Bruises, Brandt sisters, James Caesar, Grace and Slagle, Paul Castle, Jim-
mie Sisk, Joe Shiflen, Buck Pennington, Brandstetter and Berry, Corcoran
and Kasper, Fritz Died, Claire Dalton, Lou Folds, Nok Fairbanks, Rich-
ard Craig, and Melba Welch.

Director: Catherine Littlefield.

JVERY YEAR at this time when I am called on to review
one of the chronic ice skating shows, I think of a youth
whom I first encountered as the janitor of a little summer
theatre in New Jersey and whose principal duty seemed to
be scraping the chewing gum off the bottoms of the seats.
In the autumn of the same year he was drafted into the
army and it was six months before I ran across him again.
"How are things going?" I inquired. The look on his face
was that of one whom the world had robbed of his proud
birthright as he replied, "They've got me in a camp sweep-
ing up cigarette butts; think of that for a man of my
talents!"

Though noted far and wide for my modesty, I neverthe-
less feel much the same way when I am asked critically to
sweep up these ice shows. I did not mind it so much at the
start, but it has got to be a bit humiliating. In the first
place, any office-boy could do the job, since the shows are
always much alike and since, even at their best, which is
seldom, they no more require any critical ability than a
three-legged sack race. In the second place, qpce you say
that the skaters are proficient, there is nothing left but the
production numbers, which most often are exactly the
same, except maybe for a little more snow paint on one of

May 28, 1947 19

the settings or a little less purple moonlight when the skat-
ers appear in white costumes. And that hardly calls for the
virtuosity of a Diderot. In the third place, and finally, it
would be a simple matter for the office-boy to confect a per-
fectly acceptable review by copying what one had written
about all the preceding shows. To wit, that the new show is
interesting enough for, say, half an hour but that the end-
less skating thereafter gets to be very monotonous; that
Freddie Trenkler, the clown, though he still does his same
old act, is now and then amusing; that a little more imag-
ination would help the show no end; and that, anyway,
however anyone else may feel, the kids are sure to enjoy it
enormously.

This last statement, however, begins to seem to me to be
rather too condescending and to need some qualification.
I have not the slightest doubt that the youngsters are
greatly entertained by the first one or two or possibly even
three ice skating shows which they are taken to see. But
that they continue to be as greatly entertained by the con-
stant duplications, I have the friendly consideration for
them to disbelieve, that is, if they are anything like I was
at their age. Ice shows were not in existence in that prehis-
toric period, but a fair equivalent in the form of roller
skating shows was. And, while I accepted the pleasure hy-
pothetically implicit in them for several years and was po-
lite enough not to raise hell on subsequent occasions, I re-
call that I nevertheless always felt pretty glum when the
old man announced I was to be privileged the rapture of
attending another.

The theory that youngsters must hugely enjoy a show
because their presence at it proves as much and because
they do not when it is over kick their adult escorts in the
ribs needs, I think, some overhauling. Aside from the un-
wonted politesse of the average lambkin when he is dressed
up, which restrains him, albeit uncomfortably, from giv-
ing vent to his true feelings, the idea that he is not as im-
patient of repetition and monotony as older folk is un-
thinkable to anyone who has taken the trouble to observe
his reactions in other relevant directions. He complains at

20 Icetime of 1948

the daily breakfast oatmeal. He yowls at the imposed regu-
lar seven o'clock bed hour. He hates the daily demand that
he wash behind the ears. He protests against the invariable
Sabbath injunctions as to his week-day divertissements. He
spills part of his detested daily lunch milk under the table.
He rebels at length against Sunday School. He cries if he
finds the same old orange occupying once again the toe of
his Christmas stocking. And he is disconsolate in the face
of dozens of other such repeated indignities. To imagine
that this same darling suddenly acquires an enthusiastic
admiration for the endlessly repeated and unchanging ice
skating shows takes a great deal of imagining, and at this
languid time of the year I am never up to it.

As for adults, the grind of suffering a long succession of
the shows is something of a piece with the rapt enjoyment
to be had in peering for two or three hours into a Frig-
idaire for a bottle of beer that isn't there. I appreciate that
the box-office statistics seem to contradict me. The shows
play to big crowds and make all kinds of money. But to ar-
gue that because of that fact the customers must naturally
delight in them is to argue that, because the five-and-ten-
cent stores do millions of dollars* worth of business, people
prefer to smell at a dime paper rose instead o the real ar-
ticle. The principal and correlated reason why mobs of
people go to the shows is that they are cheap, and a lot of
people have to take what in the way of entertainment they
can afford. Many of them make the best of it, as they make
the best of it with a twenty-five cent hamburger when
their mouths water for a filet mignon. And, having to take
the inexpensive skating shows, they conveniently pretend
to themselves that they are not so tiresome as they really
are and, anyway, that, even if they are, they are a relief
from the steady diet of inexpensive movies, which are
more tiresome still.

In this latest of these specimens of refrigerated ennui the
skaters may be said to be as expert as heretofore; Freddie
Trenkler again scoots like mad around the rink and again
brings himself up with a supposedly very comical abrupt
stop, spraying the customers down front with ice flakes;

May 28, 1947 21

and the lines of girls and boys skate Rockette-wise, negoti-
ate the usual pinwheel formations, and try for a laugh
when one of the boys pretends to miss the end of the whirl-
ing line and frantically endeavors to catch up with it, or at
least I take it for granted that he does, though I didn't un-
necessarily hang around to make sure. Also repeating their
domesticated performances are the twirling blonde Joan
Hyldoft, the knockatout team who call themselves the
Bruises, the gliding Brandt sisters, and the all familiar rest.
Only Joe Jackson, Jr., may be said in a manner to intro-
duce a new note with his old imitation of the older vaude-
ville act of his late pater.

At this point, I may state that I dislike to boast, but my
critical influence seems to be enormous. Every year, fol-
lowing my pronouncement that these shows are as dull as
yesterday's razor blades and are endless copies of glaciated
mediocrity, like frozen corn starch masquerading as French
ice cream, they promptly collapse to the tune of hundreds
of thousands of dollars, net profit. This has been going on
now for at least seven or eight seasons and they indicate no
signs of letting up on my acumen and the resulting reve-
nue. What it all probably goes to prove is that, while one's
opinion of what constitutes theatrical art may be perfectly
sound and enthusiastically endorsed by scholars who have
not gone near the theatre since Ada Rehan died, it is a con-
siderable mistake to imagine that one's opinion of what
constitutes entertainment is of any interest to anyone but
one's self.

That, however, is nothing I have just discovered. I first
began to appreciate it shortly after I started in this busi-
ness of criticism, which was back in the age when you
could still get a Martini for fifteen cents, with a free lunch
of hard-boiled eggs, Virginia ham, bacon rolls, fish balls,
Cheddar cheese, small hot sausages, smoked herring, lob-
ster salad, potato chips, pretzels, celery, olives, and concili-
atory cloves thrown in. It was then and that early that I re-
viewed a show called The Road To Yesterday and sternly
promulgated the decree that not only did it default on all
those qualities favored by the higher drama criticism but

22 Icetime of 1948

that you could knock me over with The Red Feather if it
contained even the germ of the kind of entertainment fa-
vored by the public. The public, however, was apparently
either too busy at the moment or too careless properly
to digest my sagacity and embarrassed me profoundly by
pouring itself in droves into the theatre where the play
was showing and having itself a grand time at it. I
promptly learned my lesson and have forgotten it since
only at rare intervals, to my sorrow. I now stick to criti-
cism instead of to sticking out my neck. If I am not enter-
tained by a bad play or show, I content myself with telling
why personally I think it is bad, and if the public finds it
nevertheless entertaining I simply take private refuge in
Commodore Vanderbilt's old remark and, at least in print,
shut ma mouf.

It is thus that the circumstance that countless people
have disobeyed my critical injunctions as to the ice skating
shows and have flocked to them and even ostensibly en-
joyed themselves at them does not in any way discommode
me. Nevertheless, the public can not stop me from won-
dering how and why the shows continue to do such dis-
gustingly big business year in and year out. It must be,
as I have previously guessed, the relatively low admission
charges. If a fellow wishes to take his girl to a Broadway
musical show like Annie Get Your Gun, a pair of good or-
chestra seats, if he can get them at the box-office, which is
very doubtful, cost him thirteen dollars and twenty cents.
A pair for a musical show like this Icetime Of 1948 on the
other hand cost him only four dollars and eighty cents.
The Center Theatre is a handsomer one than the Imperial,
where Annie is playing; the surroundings are quite as gay;
the "show air" is equally present; and the evening-out feel-
ing is also there. It is, accordingly, a desirable bargain to
anyone willing to accept, for the seventh or eighth time, a
waltzing couple on skates as a substitute for Ethel Merman
off them, Littlefield and Fortis tunes for Irving Berlin's,
Edward Gilbert's and Bruno Main's penny postcard scen-
ery for Jo Mielziner's, and the number in which a girl falls
asleep under a spangled tree and dreams rapturously of a

May 2S, 1947 23

bad vaudeville act for anything at all. But as for me, when
it comes to entertainment, I fear that I can find consider-
ably less in a female skater who skates in unison with an-
other behind a scrim mirror, or in a male who squats and
kicks out his legs Russian-fashion, or even in fifty of both
sexes who execute the 1895 pinwheel number than, like
my friend Somerset Maugham in another direction, in a
glass of good, cold lager.

24

LOUISIANA LADY. JUNE *, 1947

A musical comedy with book by Isaac Green, Jr., and Eu-
gene Berton, music and lyrics by Monte Carlo and Alma
Sanders. Produced by Hall Shelton for 4 performances in
the Century Theatre.

PROGRAM

ELGATO

Kay Jacquemot

MADAME CORDAY

Monica Moore

JOE

Patrick Meaney

PIERRE

Ken Bond

MICHEL

Lou Wills, Jr.

MARQUETTE

Robert Kimberly

SARAH

TinaPrescott

MERLUCHE

George Baxter

CORRINE

Ann Lay

ALPHONSE

Charles Judels

GERMAINE

PattiHall

CELESTE

Bertha PoweU

ANNETTE

Angela CarabeUa

A DRUNK

George Roberts

SUZANNE

Patti Kingsley

HOSKINS

Berton Dams

MARIE-LOUISE

Edith Fellows

JANET

Francis Keyes

CHARLEY

Howard Blaine

GOLONDRINA

Victoria Cordova

CHRISTOPHE

William Downes

Cmco

Michael Landau

GEORGE

Ameil Brown

GASTON

Bert Wilcox

HUGO

Lee Kerry

MRS. DANFORTH

Ann Viola

GENEVTEVE

Isabella Wilson

GEORGETTE

Isabella Wilson

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. A levee in New Orleans. April 1830.
Scene 2, A study in Miss Browne's Finishing School. Sunday afternoon.
Scene 3. The parlor of the Casino Deluxe of Mme. Corday. The foUow-
ing evening. Scene 4. A garden. Scene 5. The parlor. A few minutes later.
Act II. Scene 1. The parlor. Immediately following. Scene 2. A street.
Scene 3. The Cucacheena Cafe. Scene 4. Canal street. Scene 5. The gam-
ing room. One hour later. Scene 6. The garden.

Director: Edgar MacGregor.

T

JLW]

LWENTY YEARS AGO Samuel Shipman and Kenneth Per-
kins wrote and produced a dreary pornographic play
called Creoles., which promptly failed. Last year an equally
dreary musical show called In Gay New Orleans while be-
ing tried out in Boston failed and closed even more
promptly. Operating inscrutably, Mr. Shelton bought the
latter 's scenery and costumes, borrowed the Creoles script
and hired a pair of mechanics to adapt it to the scenery
and costumes in lieu of the original book, and called

June 2, 1947 25

the concoction Louisiana Lady, which now failed more
promptly still.

Items contributive to the immediate storehouse dis-
patch:

1. Plot: The moldering one about the innocent little maiden
who returns to what she believes is her respectable old fam-
ily home and finds herself instead in a bordello, in this in-
stance presided over by her mother who has fallen into the
power of a blackmailing knave.

2. Comedy: The kind which consists in the dialect comedian's
cracking his tongue against the roof of his mouth to indi-
cate the sound of a pulled champagne cork, along with his
pronunciation of the word "niece" as "sneeze/'

3. Music: The derivative kind which is familiar to the point
of impertinence.

4. Lyrics: "I Want To Live, I Want To Love," "The Night
Was All To Blame," "When You Are Close To Me," "No
One Cares For Dreams," and "It's Mardi Gras!"

5. Choreography: The kind in which the male dancers every
few minutes hoist the female dancers into the air.

6. Performance: The species which brings the singing ladies
and gentlemen to stand close to the footlights and blink
their eyes winningly at the audience, and subsequently to
make their exits with either a merry laugh or an outraged
hauteur.

7. Direction: The brand which causes the lovers when they
quarrel to plump themselves down at opposite ends of a
table, to avert their faces from each other, and irritably to
tap their feet.

26

OPEN HOUSE. JUNE 3, 1947

A comedy by Harry Young. Produced by Rex Carlton for
7 performances in the Cort Theatre.

PROGBAM

MRS. BABBETT
GLENN STEWART
LEEELKINS

Mary Boland
John Harvey
Don Gibson

BOB
JENNIE
LETTER CARRIER

Del Hughes
Dulcie Cooper
Harold Grau

OLIVIA COREY
EXPRESSMAN
MRS. COREY

Augusta Roeland
Sammy Schwartz
Ann Dere

UNCLE WATTERSON Curtis Cooksey
CHIEF Ben Loughlin
POLICEMAN Dennis Bohan

FLO ELKINS
MIKE
JOE

Joyce Mathetvs
Dave Tyrrell
Steven Gathers

MR. WESTCOTT
PHOTOGRAPHER
MR. PiLstrDSKi

William David
Forest Taylor, Jr.
WUlKuluva

SYNOPSIS; The action takes place in the living-room of Mrs. Bar-
rett's home in a small industrial city in the East. Act I. Late one summer
afternoon. Act II. Early evening. One week later. Act III. 11 a.m. the fol-
lowing day.

Time: The present.

Director: Coby Ruskin.

I

T is A SAFE BET that the Rex Carlton who produced the
gobbler is now going about proclaiming that the theatre is
such a gamble that, compared with it, investing in New
Jersey gold mines or even in the shell game is the zenith of
wisdom. The plaint is a familiar one. Let some such tyro
ambitiously put on something so bad that the stagehands
have to hold their noses and he is nevertheless firmly con-
vinced that, if the public does not flock to it, the fault is
not his own but that of some mysterious and inscrutable
element connected with the show business in general.

If a man were to try to sell freezeless coolers and found
that nobody would buy them, he would hardly allege that
you never can tell about the icebox business. If he were
to hawk wine glasses without bottoms and no purchasers
showed up, he would not argue that it seemed to indicate
that a man was a fool to go into the wine glass business.
But if he puts on a play just as defective and cannot sell it,

June 3, 1947 27

he is positive that the state |o affairs is solely attributable
to the fact that no one can guess what the theatre public
will like. There have been countless such profound philos-
ophers in the theatre's history and their number shows no
signs of diminishing. The theatre is probably no more a
gamble than many other businesses. But you can not play
it and win if you haven't the equipment for it any more
than you can win in the book publishing business if you
can't read, despite some seeming evidence to the contrary.
Consider the article which this Carlton had sublime faith
in as a money-maker and which he hoped the public would
cherish.

The plot treated once again of the housing shortage, a
topic that had already brought grim failure to all but one
of the plays that dealt with it, and the one exception made
little more than chicken-feed. In this case, the story was of
a widow in need of funds who finds herself burdened with
a large, expensive house. Though the uppish neighbor-
hood frowns on the renting of rooms to outsiders, she takes
in a pair of young men whom she has casually met on a
bus, who can not find a place to live in, and whose rent
money will come in handy. When the neighborhood raises
objections, the newcomers profess to be relatives and all
'seems to be resolved satisfactorily until various question-
able friends of the twain put in an appearance. The up-
shot is a police raid on the house in the belief that it is one
of ill repute, with the chief of the protesting female neigh-
bors loaded into the wagon with everyone else. The last
act, as last acts have a way of doing in bad plays if not al-
ways in life, straightens everything out but the investment
of Mr. Carlton and his backers.

In a preceding play called Tenting Tonight, the plot
similarly had to do with a woman who met the housing
shortage by taking in several young men who similarly
pretended, when trouble came, to be relatives. Also, when
things appeared again to be running smoothly, a number
of their shady friends similarly showed up and similarly
caused the chief of the protesting characters to conclude
that the house was one of dubious morals. Tenting To-

28 Open House

night was duly and unanimously belted by the reviewers,
closed after a short engagement, and lost its alL

To continue the auditing. Harry Young, the author of
Mr. Carlton's anticipated mint, may not, for all one knows,
be a radio or movie writer but he writes like one. His
dramatic-literary ability is eminently more suited to air
programs and the films than to the stage. His humor is the
kind that calls for a radio studio claque for appreciation,
and his idea of dramatic line and situation the sort that,
with a wholesale dose of the psychopathology presently
admired by Hollywood injected into it, should make a
passable Grade-Z picture.

Mr. Carlton doubtless further imagined that by casting
Mary Boland in the leading role he would have a marquee
name that would rope in the customers. Miss Boland is an
able and amusing comedienne and did as well as almost
anyone else could possibly have done. But, with all her vir-
tues, she is not an audience draw on her own, as was indi-
cated by the quick collapse of The Greatest Of These, in
which she had appeared only a few months before. Miss
Boland, like almost any other actress, big or not so big,
needs a good, or at least a poor but popularly magnetic,
play to get people in to see her. And this Open House
would scarcely have got them in even were she to have ap-
peared in it along with Katharine Cornell, Sonja Henie,
and Jumbo. Mr. Carlton, when and if he grows up in the
theatre, will begin to realize such things. Meanwhile, he
should have reflected that an actor or actress, however tal-
ented, can no more bring in the money with a play that no
one wants to see than a poker player, however expert, can
rake in the chips with a single king or queen. He should
have reflected, in short, on various such later day catastro-
phes. There was Tallulah Bankhead, for example, and
The Eagle Has Two Heads, which could not have turned
a profit even had Tallulah done a strip-tease and chased
Father Divine up and down the aisles, with Gypsy Rose
Lee in hot pursuit. There was Spencer Tracy and The
Rugged Path) who for all his potential following could not
persuade the trade to come in. There was, in another di-

June 3, 1947 29

rection, even the great Bobby Clark Himself who could
not do much, for all his popularity, with The Would-Be
Gentleman. There was, too, Mr. Carlton should have med-
itated, James Mason and Bathsheba, which could not draw
even the actor's screen worshippers. And there were Mady
Christians and Message For Margaret, Billie Burke and
Mrs. January And Mr. Ex 3 Pauline Lord and Sleep My
Pretty One, Ethel Barrymore and Embezzled Heaven, and
many others.

The theatre, in conclusion, will always be not only a
gamble but a certain loss to men who do not approach it
with at least the measure of caution with which they ap-
proach a new barber or a new girl. Those who have thus
approached it and who have added to caution some experi-
ence and sagacity have got pretty rich from it, as the rec-
ords from Palmer and Daly to the Klaw and Erlanger syn-
dicate and Belasco and from Frohman, Savage, et al. 3 to a
number of the producers today attest. There are even out-
siders of some wit and sapience who have not found it to
be such a dangerous investment: Howard Cullman, the
tobacco tycoon, for one, whose shrewd guessing has picked
three or four winners for every loser and who has derived
goodly profits from putting his money into the box-office
kind of plays and even the more risky musical shows.

Mr. Carlton in the future should consult either a good
fortune-teller or someone like Rodgers and Hammerstein.

30

NO EXIT. JUNE 9, 1947

A revival of the play by Jean-Paul Sartre. Produced by the
On Stage group for 38 performances in the Cherry Lane
Theatre.

PROGRAM

VALET Glen Alvey

GARQN Alexis Solomos

ESXELLE Sally Sigler

INEZ Brenda Ericson

Scene: A living-room in Second Empire style.
Director: Frank Corsaro.

T

AHE PERSISTING PASSION of those mental giants who hold
that drama is grossly unendurable save it be packed with
profound thought continues to be the Frenchman, Sartre.
Two specimens of his admired deep thinking had thus far
been revealed to the local stage: this revived No Exit
(Huis Clos) and The Flies (Les Mouches) . What, pre-
cisely, are they like?

No Exit shows us three persons condemned to spend an
eternity in Hell in one another's close company. The three
are a cowardly collaborationist in the last war, a female in-
fanticide of loose sexual morals, and a distaff pervert. The
action brings out the psychic torture and despair of the
trio. The theme is stated in the line, "Hell is other peo-
ple/' Aside from the facts that the tone and method of the
play were long ago anticipated by the German Wedekind;
that the dramatic scheme was subsequently utilized in a
short Grand Guignol psychological play wherein three sim-
ilarly ill-assorted people were locked in a dark cellar and,
as in the Sartre exhibit, were overcome by the hopelessness
of their plight; and that a more imaginative Frenchman
might have thought of the greater and crueler irony of
three extremely witty and too charming people faced with
the boredom and misery of spending an eternity together
aside from such points, let us engage the quality of the
author's touted cerebral luxuriance.

June 9, 1947 31

That the play is partly filagreed with Existentialism, the
pseudo-philosophical theory of human conduct of which
Sartre is the shogun, has been sufficiently suggested in the
critical prints. That this Existentialism, which gives into
the individual's keeping his own freedom and destiny and
denies the power over him of the various old social, na-
tional, and upper-story gods, is an obvious brew of Kierke-
gaard and Heidegger decorated with a Left Bank cherry is
also sufficiently appreciated. And that, when the boozy ef-
fect of the tipple wears off, it is seen to be little more than
a strident recitation of the old maxim, "Man is the master
of his own soul," embroidered with the platform gestures
of Nietzsche, Robert Ingersoll and Isadora Duncan, is al-
most as apparent. So much for that.

We come to the afflatus of the play as more directly ex-
pressed. Inquiring into the real motives for certain human
behavior, Sartre argues that, though a man may find good
reasons for having done a thing, ''fear and hatred and all
the dirty little instincts one keeps dark" may also have
been motives. As to the doctrine that "a man is what he
wills himself to be," he retorts, "It is what one does, and
nothing else, that shows the stuff one is made of/* And as
to death, his philosophy is "One always dies too soon, or
too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that mo-
ment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the sum-
ming up. You are your life, and nothing else." These
pearls of wisdom constitute the sum total of the play's in-
tellectual content. One and all are platitudes, familiar
from long restatement over the centuries, and no better, if
as well, put than when "the late lamented Ed Howe, the
sage of Kansas' Potato Hill, wrote them to fill out the bot-
toms of his four-sheet monthly newspaper's columns. And
as to the theme, "Hell is other people," that may be re-
called from Gogol's (1809-1852) "Hell is not oneself but
others."

There you have a fair distillation of the rich, fresh men-
tality of a play which elsewhere occupies itself with such
brainy topics as the absence of tooth-brushes and bathroom
facilities in the lower regions, with the hideousness of old-

32 No Exit

fashioned wine-red and green sofas, with a woman's lost
feeling if she hasn't a vanity mirror, and with red faces
that resemble tomatoes.

The Flies, considerably the better of the two plays, is still
another retelling of the Orestes-Electra legend couched in
modern phraseology and contains what is described as Sar-
tre's prescription for the deadly psychological malaise of
such mortals as figure in No Exit. In the prescription the
playwright's admirers detect an intellectual puissance even
greater than that demonstrated in the latter play.

Sartre's prodigiously original brain exercise in this case
results in the philosophy that "once freedom lights its bea-
con in a man's heart, the gods are powerless against him/'
In other words, that when a man, having rid himself of the
conventional sense of guilt and qualm, appreciates to the
full that freedom is his birthright, the old forces of social
and religious intimidation become no longer operative.
And, as his fellow Existentialist and spokesman, Madame
de Beauvoir, expands it, "The true use of freedom is to
help others to freedom. In helping others Orestes helps
himself as well, because in this way he achieves the tri-
umph of individual freedom. People often do not accept
their freedom because they are afraid." The exact nature
of the virginal profundity inherent in the philosophy es-
capes this moron. He seems to recall much the same thing
years ago in the writings of the German-Czech Franz Kafka,
notably in The Castle, etc., to say nothing of in those of the
Kierkegaard aforesaid. Sartre's artifice is simply to state
very positively, and thus impress those who react most
readily to dogmatic expression, what his predecessors stated
more moderately. The essence of the philosophy is, fur-
thermore, scarcely startling. There were sufficient traces of
it in Eckhart, Engels, Max Nordau, and many others long
since gone. "He who is free and knows it knows no gods,"
wrote one of Sartre's famous fellow-countrymen more than
three centuries ago. "Man is man only by his refusal to be
passive," says Sartre. "Do not say I would, but say I will,
that it may now be so/* said Eckhart more than six cen-
turies ago.

June 9, 1947 33

That such and similar worn ideas should be regarded as
noteworthy mental achievements is, nevertheless, not sur-
prising. Even at their most familiar and obvious they are
tablets from the mount in comparison with much of what
passes for mentality in the drama of Broadway. After a
starvation diet, even a slightly senescent pork chop seems
pretty wonderful. We should not forget that Ibsen shook
the claptrap reasoning of the English-speaking stage off its
feet with ideas which, while strange to the theatre, were
not materially above the intellectual level of a popular
novelist. Nor should we forget that Shaw subsequently
shook Ibsen off his feet in turn by heaving himself into
the latter's domain and at the very outset staggering audi-
ences far and wide with, for the first time from a stage, a
facile parroting of doctrines culled from Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, and Marx.

Sartre, of course, is no remotest, faintest Ibsen or Shaw,
but he seems to be onto the trick of rubbing one platitude
against another and producing what the credulous see as
brilliant sparks.

34

LAURA. JUNE 26, 1947

A mystery play by Vera Caspary and George Sklar based on
the former's novel of the same name. Produced by H. Clay
Blaney in association with S. P. and R. P. Steckler for 45
performances in the Cort Theatre.

PROGRAM

MARKMCPHERSON HughMarlowe
DANNY DORGAN Tom Walsh

WAUX> LYDECKER Otto Kruger
SHELBY CARPENTER

BESSIE CLARY Crania O"M.aUey

MRS. DORGAN Kay MacDonald

A GIRL -K. T. Stevens

OJ-SEN Walter Riemer

Tom Rutherfurd

SYNOPSIS; The setting is the living-room of Laura Hunt's apart-
ment in New York City. Act I. An evening in August. Act II. The next
morning. Act III. That night.

Director: Clarence Derwent.

OHORTLY BEFORE the play opened I came across a short
story about a young Spanish girl of high birth who fell in
love with a coachman. I had not got far into it before I
encountered this further choice cliche: "A lady came up to
me with outstretched hands and a bright smile on her lips.
To the best of my knowledge, I had never seen her before
in my life." This was quickly followed by another: "She
was a fine figure of a woman, and I could well believe that
in youth she had been beautiful/' Presently came still an-
other, describing the young Spanish girl: "She was slim
. . . with a red mouth and dazzling white teeth. The fire
in her black eyes, the warmth of her smile, the seductive-
ness of her movements suggested so much passion/' etc.
Then another still: "A good many men, rich or noble and
sometimes both, had asked Dona Pilar's hand in marriage,
but notwithstanding her mother's remonstrances she had
refused them/' Then yet another: "It was decided Pilar
should be sent away to the country and kept there until
she had recovered from her infatuation." And such others
as "Nothing that anyone could say would induce her to

June 26, 1947 35

forsake the man she loved"; "The Duchess made a final
appeal to her daughter. In vain"; "I told Pilar that she
should get nothing from me. They can starve for all I
care"; and "The Countess gave him a smile that would
have turned the head of anyone who was not madly in
love already/' And more.

Since the author's name, following The New Yorker's
policy, did not appear until the end of the story, I turned
the pages to see who he could possibly be, having previ-
ously concluded that he must be some hack whose manu-
script had been bought long since in an off moment and
which was now dug out of the drawer for use in the dead
summer period when magazines, editors appreciate, are
used mainly as table coasters for gin rickey glasses. It was,
accordingly, something of a shock to discover that the
writer was not the expected nonentity but none other than
the customarily original and witty W. S. Maugham.

It was, however, no slightest shock to discover that the
authors of this Laura,, like the great majority of their kind,
were given wholesale to the cliches of the standard mystery
play. Let such evolve a plot of some interest, as in this
case, and they nevertheless are pretty certain to dull it out
of interest with repetitions of the routine characters, lines
and stage business common to the dramaturgical species.
Duly to be anticipated, for example, is the detective who
will seize up the telephone on a call from Headquarters
and monosyllabically ejaculate a startled "What? Where?,"
thus hypothetically agonizing the curiosity of the audience
as to some new suspect. Duly to be expected is the business
involving the villain's drawing of a gun to shoot the hero-
ine, the sound of a shot, the revelation that it was fired
not by the villain but by the detective warily concealed
without, and the villain's collapse with a bullet in his arm.
The comedy-relief household maid, the arbitrary periodic
dousing of the lights, the vase on the mantelpiece in which
something or other has been hidden, and in sufficient in-
stances the walking-stick containing a sword, dagger, or re-
volver may similarly be looked forward to. Often, also, one
may anticipate the man-of-the-world character, attired in

36 Laura

the ultimate cry and a fellow of pusillanimous charm, who
will be the repository of what the authors regard as a
modish and biting wit, which will take such contours as
defining this or that as the last refuge of a scoundrel and
that or this as the final essence of barbarism. The phono-
graph will be economically resorted to to supply anoma-
lous incidental music to a tense scene; thrown in will be
tokens of the authors' culture in the form of allusions to
ceramics, Shostakovich, and the contemporary French
novelists; and at least one scene will reveal the heroine in
a silk pajama outfit so elaborate that it will take the audi-
ence all of ten minutes to get its mind back on the play
again.

The story here is the murder of one woman in the belief
that she is another and the disclosure that the culprit is a
man who once sought to possess her, whose sexual impo-
tence interfered with the realization o his passion, and
who has done away with her to prevent any other man
from achieving her. In more imaginative hands it might
conceivably have been made into a taut and holding
twitcher. But in these it has become simply another garru-
lous and stenciled failure. Nor did the direction and act-
ing relieve its torpidity.

37

RIP VAN WINKLE. JULY 15, 1947

A revival of the play made from Washington Irving 9 s story
by Dion Boucicault, revised by Herbert Berghof,, with in-
cidental music by Andre Singer. Produced by the Com-
pany of Twelve for 15 performances in the City Center
Theatre.

PROGRAM

GRETCHEX Grace Coppin

MINNIE Jimsey Somers

NICK VEDDER Martin Wolf son

DERRICK VAN BEEKMAN

Byron McGrath

PETER Edwin Bruce

COCKLES lack Manning

RIP VAN WINKLE Philip Bourneuf
JACOB STEIN Jack Bittner

TOWN CRIER Del Hughes

SETH Jack Bittner

EJV.TTE Haila Stoddard

MINNTJE (grown up) Frances Reid
PETER ( grown up ) Arthur Franz

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. The Village of Falling Waters, at the
foot of the CatskiU Mountains. Scene 2. Inside Rip's house, that night.
Scene 3. A path in the CatskiUs, later the same night. Scene 4. High up
in the Catskitts, later still. Act II. Scene 1. High up in the Catskills, early
morning. Scene 2. The path in the Catskitts. Scene 3. The Vfllage of FaU~
ing Waters.

Director: Herbert BergJwf.

T

AHI

LHE POSSE of ambitious players who optimistically in-
stalled themselves in the municipal dramatic hot-spot as a
repertory project opened up shop with a revised version of
Joseph Jefferson's famous meal-ticket, and with one Bour-
neuf in Joe's old role. I confess that I approached the oc-
casion full of prejudice. Since this is obviously a shameful
condition in any critic, I ask the reader either to stop read-
ing at this point or, if he finds himself unable to resist the
allure of my prose, to proceed at his own risk and doubt-
less to his own annoyance.

Rip is one of the most engaging of American legends
and whatever the version or whoever the actor is bound to
exercise at least a measure of its spell over an auditor. And
here once again, despite miserable staging and direction, it
did so. But while in this projection it may have been ac-

38 Rip van Winkle

cepted with some favor by members of the more recent
generation it failed to enchant this older boy as it did in
those distant days when Joe was in command of it.

It isn't that Jefferson was any giant as an actor. Far from
it. He was, in fact, rather an ordinary one, one whose range
was notoriously limited and whose eminence was predi-
cated largely on this single role. His performance as Bob
Acres in The Rivals., his second most popular role, was a
negligible one. But as Rip he triumphed for almost half a
century and anyone who saw him can not see any other ac-
tor in the part without wincing. There have been actors
like that, actors whose personality, voice and manner,
whatever the volume of their talents, have so stamped cer-
tain roles that the latter become forevermore part and par-
cel of them and in which subsequent actors seem to be
gross intruders. James A. Herne in Shore Acres, William
Gillette in Sherlock Holmes, and Kyrle Bellew in Raffles
so closely identified the parts with themselves that, if one
were to view any other actor, however able, in them, one
would be sorely disquieted. And so, too, was it in the in-
stances of James O'Neill and Monte Cristo, Denman
Thompson and The Old Homestead, David Warfield and
The Music Master, and George M. Cohan and any of his
plays.

It was thus that, watching Bourneuf in Jefferson's shoes,
I condoned my prejudice by recalling Hazlitt's words: "No
wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others;
and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as
if they were aged parents or monitors. They may in the
end prove wiser than he/' Be that as it may, Bourneuf sim-
ply was not on that stage so far as I was concerned. The
years swept back their curtain and, for me, it was Joe who
was giving his old, grand performance in my memory.
There, as a youngster, I saw him again in all his long, lean
lovableness and with all that odd, cajoling croak in his
voice. There I saw him making off from his testy wife like
a household dog half-sad to be driven from surroundings
that, though intolerable, yet remained home. There I saw
him waking from his long sleep in clothes absurdly tat-

July 15, 1947 39

tered, raising himself with those familiar Jeffersonian
rheumatic calisthenics to his crooked height and squinting
in disbelief at the Hudson gleaming below him. And there .
still I saw him, bewhiskered and betalcumed like some
starved Dutch Edmond Dantes, stumbling back to his
changed fireside. What Bourneuf was like all this while, I
do not know and do not much care to know. He may have
been a good Rip or a poor one. Let the younger generation
decide for themselves. But my prejudice played another
Rip in his stead. I wasn't a critic that evening; I was the
boy who had seen Joe Jefferson a dozen or more times in
bygone Cleveland and Philadelphia, and that boy was not
to be disturbed for a minute by anyone else in Joe's place.

I am not, I think, derogating unduly the actor who
hoped to wean my recollection and attention from Joe. In
the years since Joe passed from the world, I have seen
other actors in the role and they have been no more suc-
cessful at the job.

There were some added things I missed in the produc-
tion. All the modern scenic improvements could not make
up for that wonderful old scene in the Catskills at least
it seemed wonderful then with the stage crammed with
great trees and such a wealth of carpenter work on the
mound on which Rip slept as under today's prices would
bankrupt half the producers on Broadway. Maybe my im-
agination is not what it used to be, but I also missed the
warming old Dutch atmosphere that hovered over the stage
in the early and late scenes. And I most certainly missed
that thrilling old spectacle of the brown dwarfs with the
thunder of their bowling balls so loud and detonating that
it used to knock me out of my seat onto my best matinee
knickerbockers.

If you think all this is just the sentimental maundering
of a dodo, you are, I may inform you, in error. There are
some shows and some actors that never were intended for
adult criticism anyway, and Rip and Jefferson were among
them. They were the stuffs of childish diversion and youth-
ful wonder and as such they simply remain in any man
worth his salt. Let any of my younger friends who saw the

40 Rip van Winkle

show for the first time solemnly assert that Bourneuf was
Rip to the life and let them have their way and be damned.
Let any such squirts say that Jefferson could not possibly
have been better and that anyone who says he was is just
living foolishly and forlornly in the past and let them have
their way and be double-damned. They weren't in Car-
cassonne. But we older fellows were and, whether in the
peanut gallery or down in the orchestra, it was and it re-
mains Joe for us. We are a lot of old sentimentalists?
Twenty-three, skidoo! We are a lot of old fogys? You're
off your trolley! We are pathetic worshippers of the past?
Oh, you kid! We are just a lot of dodderers who don't
know what we're talking about? Skedaddle!

P.S. Judging from report, Bourneuf must have been
pretty bad, since the show was forced to close after less than
two weeks' performances, and the company's repertory
project with it.

41

THE MAGIC TOUCH. SEPTEMBER 3, 1947

A comedy by Charles Raddock and Charles Sherman. Pro-
duced by John Morris Chanin for 12 performances in the
International Theatre.

P R O G H A M

FLOSSIE CLAYPOOL Hope Emerson
LARRY MASTERS

Carleton Carpenter
WILBUR GRIGSBY Norman Tokar
KEN WHITE Burke McHugh

CATHY TURNER Sara Anderson

JEFF TURNER WiZZiam Terry

EDDIE MITCHELL Sid Melton

J. L. THOMPSON Howard Smith
AMY THOMPSON Frances Comstock
BAKER Le Roi Operti

SYNOPSIS: The entire action of the plat/ takes place today, in the
modest Uttle New York apartment of the Turners. Act I. Early autumn.
Dinner hour. Act EL A week later. Afternoon. Act HE. An afternoon of
the following month.

Director: Herman Eotsten.

I

N THE CASE of plays like this, it is the custom of many of
the reviewers puzzledly to wrinkle their brows and to spec-
ulate why the producers ever saw fit to put them on. The
furrowing and speculating always impress me as being an
unnecessary waste of time and effort. The producers, as
Mr. John Morris Chanin in this instance, put them on be-
cause they like them.

Such bad plays are produced for the same reasons that
some men marry women who everyone else knows will at
the very least steal the change out of their trousers* pock-
ets, and that the men who do not marry them occupy them-
selves instead in throwing away their money on fixed prize
fights, ten cent sex stories in the guise of three dollar his-
torical novels, filet of flounder Marguery, and other such
whimsical sure-things. They are produced, in short, be-
cause their sponsors do not know any better, which infor-
mation should earn me the undying gratitude of those of
my colleagues who up to now have been frantically scratch-

42 The Magic Touch

ing their brains for the explanation and have been de-
spairful at ever finding the answer.

The Magic Touch is the kind of play and performance
which beetleheads every once in a while loftily point to as
indicating the superiority of the moving pictures to the
theatre. That there may be some movies very much better
than such a play I do not doubt, since if there are not, the
movies would be just where the theatre would be if there
weren't plays very much better. The movie champions,
however, seem to be the sort of intellects that pick not the
best plays to compare with the best pictures but the worst,
which is much like saying that the food at the Colony is
not anywhere nearly so good as that in the Metro-Goldwyn
commissary because one of the rolls was found to be stale.

But do not imagine for a moment that I am defending
anything like The Magic Touch at the expense of the
films. If the films seem to me to be unworthy of my atten-
tion, The Magic Touch is unworthy not only of my atten-
tion but of that of everyone else, including those who
deem the films worthy of theirs. Without a germ of merit
in any department, the thing deals with a young New York
married pair who are living on a diminutive amount of
money and with a publisher who gets the idea that a book
describing the way they succeed in doing so would make a
prodigious amount. It is true that ideas not materially
more sensational have intermittently been the foundations
of best-sellers* But it is nevertheless a safe guess that any
book made up of such characters as figure in the Messrs.
Raddock's and Sherman's contraption, even if they lived
happily on a nickel a week, would soon find its way to the
remainder counters.

The staging of the script suggested that a director was
dismissed in favor of a wind machine, and the acting tu-
mult suggested that the wind machine was of cyclone
calibre.

43

I GOTTA GET OUT. SEPTEMBER 25, 1947

A comedy by Joseph Fields and Ben Sher. Produced by
Herbert H. Harris and Lester Meyer for 4 performances in
the Cort Theatre.

PROGRAM

SWIFTY Reed Brown, Jr.

BEENIE David Burns

RADTKE HalNeiman

TIMMTE John Conway

FRANCES Eileen Larson

GUSSIE Peggy Maley

MARY Peggy Van Vleet

MRS. CLARK Edith Meiser
A TAXICAB DRIVER Ralph SrnUey

LARRY Ted Erwin

DR. PERRIN Edwin Whitner

CONSTANTS Richard ShanJdand
STODDARD Harry K. Smith

ANGEE Kenneth Forbes

DR. FLUGELMAN

E. A. Rrumschmidt
JAKE Don Grusso

STEVE Griff Evans

HOGAN Mickey Cochran

BRODERICK Dan Evans

JERRY Ralph Simone

TOM HILL Donald Foster

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. A Bookmaker's poolroom, above a sta-
ble. Late afternoon. Scene 2. The kitchen of Mrs. Clark's home in Nas-
sau, Long Island. The next morning. Act n. Belmont Park. Early after-
noon. Act HI. The kitchen of Mrs. Clark's home. A few hours later.

Time: The present.

Place: Greater New York.

Director: Joseph Fields.

A,

L.MONG THE PONDEROUS number of American plays deal-
ing with sports of various kinds, there have been very few
that have been respectably entertaining. Of the many base-
ball plays, the only one, aside from a scene or two in Elmer
The Great, which contained any amusement was the short
The Bull Pen, and that owed its humor to the same match-
less Ring Lardner. Of the football plays, only George Ade's
The College Widow has counted. The rest were mainly
trash of the Strongheart sort. Plays about track athletics
Paul Armstrong and Elliott Nugent confected specimens
have been dismal, and so have plays about tennis like
Fast Service. Rowing has produced only rubbish like
Brown of Harvard, and prize fighting but one diverting ex-

44 I Gotta Get Out

hibit, Is Zat So? Golf has not attracted our stagewriters,
though I recall one play years ago Frank Craven's The
Nineteenth Hole that was something rather sinister. In
the case of horse racing, the record is not materially better
and indicates additionally that all sports are generally a
lot better off out of doors. Of the numerous racing plays,
Henry Blossom's Checkers was moderately amusing and
the more recent Three Men On A Horse had its fairly hu-
morous moments. But from the far-away years of In Old
Kentucky, Blue Grass and The Whip through those of
Wildfire and down to the later of The Odds On Mrs. Oak-
ley and Horse Fever the entries have been chiefly selling-
platers, with spavin. There is nothing in Mr. Fields' and
Mr. Sher's contribution to alter the glum picture. Though
the authors employ enough actors depicting racetrack and
associated types to overflow a theatre stage and though all
of them comport themselves with a zeal more appropri-
ately hoped for in the horses, the show goes lame before
the first act is half over.

In the manipulation of plot, involving a trio of bookies,
the playwrights have fallen back on the old troubled con-
cern of the sweet young girl for her racetrack boy friend,
which had served the aforesaid Checkers on its opening ex-
actly forty-four years and three days before. Mixed with
this is the business of the shady lot of characters who de-
scend upon a respectable household and upset its equanim-
ity, which in turn has served at least two dozen past plays,
including such recent jewels as Tenting Tonight and Open
House. And spread thickly over all is a track lingo often
unintelligible to anyone not brought up in a stable and
nourished on oats. This lingo, I am informed by close stu-
dents, is furthermore frequently less an accurate duplica-
tion of the real thing than a theatricalized and artificially
colored paraphrase. A little of it, they tell me, is faithfully
recorded, but more is phony. It is that way, apparently,
with most of these sports argot plays. Not more than one
out of twelve catches its vulgar speech with any degree of
verity. The before-mentioned Lardner was, as everyone by

September 23, 1947 % 45

this time knows, probably the only playwright who has
caught literally the idiom of the eccentric characters he
dealt with. Ade invented a lingo that subsequently filtered
into the popular speech. Lardner did not invent; he re-
corded. (Damon Runyon, with a sharp ear, as his stories
demonstrate, did not see fit to employ his considerable gift
in the one or two plays on which he collaborated.)

To the great majority of writers of sports jargon plays,
the jargon seems simply to be a racket. Any such speech,
however bogus, is resorted to by them to supply a charac-
ter and background flavor which they can not otherwise
manage. It is, they imagine, their easy way out, since it will
impress as authentic the nine people in an audience out of
every ten who know the particular lingo only vaguely. This
holds true, moreover, not only of sports plays but of most
plays given to a vernacular supposedly indigenous to them.
And it holds equally true of a sizeable share of popular fic-
tion. The playwrights posture as neo-Lardners merely on
the score of changing every "yes" to "yeah" and every
"girl" to "broad." They flatter themselves that they have
hit off character with a beautiful sense of recognition by
having recourse to such stuff as "pleased tuh meetya,"
"wuz she cold like a clam," or "shake me a hip, baby." And
they further congratulate themselves on the precision of
their recording ears with a gangster, sports and other pat-
ois that no gangster, baseball player, ring pug or racetrack
denizen would recognize or could possibly understand
without an interpreter, who in all likelihood would not
understand it either.

The present authors, in addition, command no humor.
When they are not laboring under the delusion that all a
playwright has to do to achieve hilarious comedy is to have
his characters endlessly hurl insults at one another, they in-
dulge themselves in such material as "Let's form a bookie-
of-the month club"; a female's sarcastic snap to her parsi-
monious admirer, "I wouldn't give such a fur coat if I was
an Eskimo"; and the rejoinder to a character's mention of
the phrase, cum laude, "Come louder and funnier."

46 / Gotta Get Out

Among the players, only Edith Meiser and David Burns
survived the direction, which resolved the evening into so
athletically declamatory a performance that the stage re-
sembled an auctioneers' gymkhana.

47

OUR LAN'. SEPTEMBER 27, 1947

A play by Theodore Ward. Produced by Eddie Dowling
and Louis J. Singer for 41 performances in the Royale
Theatre.

PROGRAM

EDGAR PBICE Irving Barnes

GABE PELTIER Ferman PhUUps
EMAKUEL PRICE Louis Peterson
PATSY Ross Theresa Merritte

JOE Ross Augustus Smith, ST.

CHARLIE SETLOW

Emory Richardson
ELLEN Valerie Black

JAMES Harold Conklin

DADDY SYKES Service Bell

ROXANNA Mar go Washington

DELPHINE Muriel Smith

BEULAH Dolores Woodward

RUTH Martha Evans

MARTHA Paula Oliver

ALICE Mary Lucille McBride

FRED DOUGLAS Augustus Smith, Jr.
TOM TAGGART Jay Brooks

MINNIE Blanche Christopher

SARAH EsteUe RoUe Evans

JOSHUA TAIN William Veasey

GEORGANA Virginia Chapman

DOSIA Edith Atuka "Reid

Or .T.TF WEBSTER Richard Angarola
LEM Chauncey Reynolds

CHESTER Edmund Cambridge

HANK SAUNDERS Charles Lilienthal
CAPTAIN BRYANT Jack Becker

LTRETH ARBARBANEL Julie Hay don
OLIVER WEBSTER James Harwood
CAPTAIN STEWART Gene O'DonneU
JOHN BURKHARDT Frank TweddeU

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. A cave on a road to Savannah, eve-
ning, January, 1865. Scene 2. The forge on an island of the coast of
Georgia an afternoon two days later. Scene 3. The island three months
later. Scene 4. April 14, 1865. Scene 5. That evening. Act II. Scene 1.
The island a week later. Scene 2. Six weeks later. Scene 3. Several
months later. Scene 4. A week later. Scene 5. The following, afternoon.

Director: Eddie "Dowling.

J.RODUCED EXPERIMENTALLY the season before down in the
little Henry Street Settlement theatre and now placed on
view in a professionally staged and directed presentation,
the play was to be commended to those many among us
who, like this recorder, have latterly been inclined to side-
step the Negro drama which has been ladled out in over-
dose, which has usually traversed already too well-kenned
ground, and which has become a little tiresome in its too

48 Our Lan

frequent harping on the Intolerance and equality theme.
There are those of us, indeed, who have thought that one
more play by a white author stoutly contending that there
is no difference between a George Washington Carver and
a George Washington Hill would be rather more than we
could intelligently bear. And when it came to Negro play-
wrights, one more despondently deploring the fact that
whites do not treat Marian Anderson with the same respect
which they show Liz Billing or Broadway Rose would, we
felt, have a similar effect on us. For this later day tendency
in literature and the drama to denounce discrimination
between the races and to beseech us to accept a Booker T.
Washington or a W. E. Burghardt Du Bois as the equal of
a Bugsy Siegel has influenced us considerably less to any
commiseration than to a derisory guffaw. What most often
has been lacking in the plays by Negroes has thus been
self-respect, and in those by whites, sense. And in both,
poise. Melodrama has taken the place of rationality; indig-
nation has been substituted for perception; and the the-
matic game has been played with deuces wild and the
joker. The result has been mere sound and fury, signify-
ing nothing but sociological drama in burnt cork.

Ward, a Negro, and his play about Negroes are, how-
ever, in a class apart. Commingling power with pity, pride
with humility, and hope with despair, the story, reinforced
with song, tells simply and affectingly of the Negroes who
were given land in Georgia by General Sherman after his
Civil War operations in that territory, of the subsequent
decision of the Federal government to take it from them,
of their struggle to hang on to it and of their final compul-
sory relinquishment of it, along with their trustful but
defeated efforts to cultivate it to their economic independ-
ence. The natural tragic force of the theme is immeasur-
ably greater and much more impressive than the artificial
soapbox force of all the recent Negro propaganda plays
rolled into one.

One of the relative merits of the play is the manner in
which the folk songs often have been made to seem a nat-
ural and integral part of it. In many a Negro play we have

September 27, 1947 49

seen, the songs appear to have been incorporated arbitrar-
ily and have had an unmistakable air of having been fallen
back upon to fill in gaps in the dramaturgy and to distract
the auditor from the plays* temporary weaknesses. Ward,
on the other hand, has utilized them not as such deceptive
raisins in a half-baked cake but honestly to hearten and
forward his dramatic action and to color his theme interi-
orly. In the more usual Negro exhibit, the songs are em-
ployed much as songs were in the older lesser musical com-
edies, to break up dialogue in danger of becoming tedious
and to bridge with a presumptive acceptability the empty
stretches between the love scenes and the comedian's pratt-
falls. Whenever in such Negro plays there has been fear of
plot drooping or of internal color fading, song has been
rushed into the breach, with the consequent impression
that one has had some trouble deciding whether one has
been invited to attend a drama or a minstrel show periodi-
cally interrupted by a dramatic plot.

Another of die play's virtues is the author's control of
emotion. While it is present in plenty, it never is allowed
to get out of hand and overweigh itself. In the average Ne-
gro drama, an excess of emotion is merchanted on the du-
bious theory that it is characteristic of the Negro, and what
results is only a lot of bad melodrama masquerading as the
natural expression of Negro character. That the Negro is
a more emotional person than his average white counter-
part may be true. But the theatrical notion that he invari-
ably conducts himself, in both his serious and lighter mo-
ments, after the manner of a figure in the old-time gallery
melodramas made up with black greasepaint is surely open
to question. Any such notion, I think, is a dramatic skin
game.

A third merit is Mr. Ward's beginning of his play at the
very beginning and not, as is so frequently the habit among
our playwrights, dawdling until such a time as the play-
wright anticipates that the audience will be wholly in and
that quiet will have settled over the house. As almost ev-
eryone knows, it is a cardinal article of the American The-
atrical Credo that an audience never under any circurn-

50 Our Lan

stances Is in Its seats on time, and that an opening night
congregation especially is always so tardy that the second
act sometimes starts before it is fully assembled. I have
been going to the theatre for more years now than even a
venerable elephant can probably remember and I may re-
port that, while the Credo's article is occasionally true, it is
in most cases no more accurate than that other of its arti-
cles which maintains that the Cinderella plot, if handled at
all well, is always good for money at the box-office.

The normal audience, when and if the house is full, is
composed o about one thousand people, and that includes
the mezzanine, balcony, boxes, etc. Some of these people
are a little late in arriving, but their number is generally
in proportion no greater than that which is late in catching
trains or, surely, for dinner engagements. I should guess
that about ten to twenty would be a fair estimate. And it is
the same on opening nights. Since, moreover, the curtains
on the latter occasions are usually delayed anyway, it makes
small difference. My casual check of premiere audiences
last season showed that not more than twelve people on
the average were not in their seats when the play eventu-
ally began. But so ingrained is the conviction that at least
half the audience is still not seated when the curtain rises
on opening nights, and that at least one-fifth is still out
gobbling its dinner spaghetti on subsequent nights, that
playwrights, with their producers* eager concurrence, write
the first five or ten minutes of their scripts with the notion
firmly imbedded in their crania. The consequence is that
one-third of the new plays back and fill in killing time to
bridge the imaginary period and in the process not only
ruin what should be their immediate effect but make the
large majority of folk already in their seats disgruntled to
the point of cursing.

Though the practice is not altogether new, it has been
retained in later years to what seems, in view of an audi-
ence's increased sophistication, a gratuitous degree. In the
older era, it may be recalled, playwrights used to tide over
the audience's theoretical late arrival by having a maid
character industriously dust off and polish the furniture

September 27, 1947 51

which a program note informed us had just been contrib-
uted spick and span by one of the smart furniture shops of
the time. Or, if they were persuaded that no audience ever
conceivably materialized until around nine o'clock, by aug-
menting the maid with a butler and causing the pair, once
the extended dusting and polishing were accomplished, to
enter into a lengthy disquisition on the family's person-
nel, habits, morals, general idiosyncrasies, and pet canary.
Though playwrights are no longer quite so obvious, they
are still obvious enough. Instead of the maid and the but-
ler solo or in combination, they resort to such manifest
dodges as a long-held empty stage amplified after a spell
with the protracted ringing of a telephone, or a radio that
howls until a character belatedly comes on and turns it off,
or a character who enters and strolls around the stage look-
ing at the objets d'art until the mistress of the household,
who the maid allows will be down in a jiffy, appears all
of four minutes later, or something equally routine and
painful.

The formula has become stereotyped. First, the empty
stage. Then, if not the telephone bell or the radio, the but-
ler who ushers in a caller. "Thank you very much, Perkins.
I telephoned Miss Daphne. Is she in? 1 * "I believe she is, sir;
111 see." "Is Mrs. Vanderbatten at home?" "I don't know,
sir; 111 find out." "Today is her day, isn't it?" "Yes, sir, I
believe it is, sir. Ah, I see through the window that Miss
Daphne is sitting in the garden," "But Mrs. Vanderbat-
ten?" "Yes, I see her sitting in the garden with Miss
Daphne." "Will you kindly tell them I am here? Say Mr.
Mosebeam," "Yes, sir, immediately." "Don't hurry, Per-
kins, they may be consulting on something or other, and I
hesitate to disturb them until they are finished." And so
on. By this time, one of two things has happened. Either
the audience has made up its mind, often correctly, that
the play is going to be a calf's liver, or it has begun to doze
off ahead of schedule.

It is a peculiarity of our relatively better playwrights
that some of them are frequently the greatest offenders in
this respect. Convinced that everything they write is so

52 Our Lan

priceless that an audience must not miss a single word of
it, they safeguard their great treasures with a wealth of such
delaying tactics. The lesser playwrights, on the other hand,
who are simply out for the audience's money, more often
get down to business at once, and to the devil with the peo-
ple who come in late. Owen Davis, in, as I recall, At 8:45,
thus lifted the curtain with a wild pounding on a library
door, the smashing into the room of half a dozen charac-
ters, their headlong rush to a closet door, its pulling open,
and the tumbling out of a murdered body, all within a
space of two minutes flat. And I believe it was in some-
thing called The Donovan Affair he started bang off
with a scene in which one of the characters seated around
a table extinguished the lights to display the luminosity of
a precious stone and without further ado was stabbed to
death.

I do not say that O'Neill ought to take under advise-
ment a play in which his favorite dramatic philosophical
influence, Mother Earth, would assume human form and
seize all his confused and soul-searching characters to her
bosom the moment the first curtain goes up. Nor do I sug-
gest that George Kelly or any of our other more reputable
playwrights lift the curtain on the spectacle of the husband
telling off his psychopathically base wife for what she is
and filling in the rest of the evening with flashbacks. What
I do say and suggest is merely that they and their col-
leagues in the art of respectable theatrical fare learn that
nine hundred and eighty people out of a thousand are usu-
ally present when a play begins and that to treat the nine
hundred and eighty as infants and morons until the other
twenty show up is a not particularly substantial idea. What
the lesser playwrights do is not, of course, of much critical
account. But, whether of such account or not, I confess to
having a lot of good will toward those among them who
have indicated that they appreciate that when an audience
pays out its good four dollars and eighty cents for two
hours and fifteen minutes of entertainment, it is a swindle
to cheat it out of ten minutes or thirty-seven cents' worth
of it.

September 27, 1947 53

So much for Ward's play's credits. Its debilities lie in an
over-expansion of and repetitiousness in three of its later
scenes which, though they have been a bit tightened in this
production, call for a deal more editing; and in an inter-
mittent copy-book flavor in the writing. While most of the
latter avoids stenciled expression, there occasionally ob-
trude such poetastrical passages as "Pride without love is
like a body without a soul; it's like a flower without the
sun; soon turns yellow, shrivels up and dies." The episode
in which the heroine relates the circumstances of her se-
duction and the imminence of offspring additionally fol-
lows the pattern of phraseology conventional to the situa-
tion over the long years and edges dangerously close to
comedy. The author, being yet not too expert in drama-
turgy, furthermore permits his tragedy to end on a dimin-
ishing note which, while it in more able hands might still
have managed a sense of purge and spiritual exaltation,
presently tends to give the audience instead a feeling of
let-down and dramatic depression. Had he, as counterpoint
to the despairful duet of his hero and heroine, shown the
white Northern schoolteacher leading the little Negro chil-
dren over the high island ridge to the mainland and to the
possibilities of a Negro future, he might better have served
both his final curtain and his play. But to all such sugges-
tions he remained, as is often the habit of novices, ada-
mant. Yet despite such lapses the drama over-all sounds
well its eloquent, tragic song.

Mr. Dowling, who was mainly responsible for giving the
play its professional hearing, directed it out of a small
measure of its earlier lack of cohesion and guided it dra-
matically to somewhat more secure ends, though the stage
lighting was at times so carelessly handled that some of the
otherwise apt manipulation lost its effect. Except for Wil-
liam Veasey in the leading male role, whose performance
missed all sense of timing and was generally of an unre-
lieved rigidity, along with an actor or two in minor roles,
he also improved the performances of those players whom
he had brought uptown and added a desired professional
note in the happy recasting of certain other parts which in

54 Our Lari

the experimental production were handled in slipshod am-
ateur fashion.

There was considerable criticism arguing that the play
was better in its original simple mounting than in this
more elaborate production. Just how a play can be better
or worse than it factually is in any kind of physical pres-
entation, I somehow can not figure out. It may, true, be a
better theatrical show in one production than in another,
but if the play itself is not still the same play I have lost
what critical sanity I once suspected I had.

55

THE HEIRESS. SEPTEMBER 29, 1947

A play, based on Henry James 9 novel, Washington Square,
by Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Produced by Fred F. Finkle-
hoffe for the rest of the season's performances in the Bilt-
more Theatre.

PROGRAM

MARIA Fiona O'Shiel

DR. AUSTIN SLOPER

Basil Rathbone
LAVENIA PENNIMAN

Patricia CoHinge
CATHERINE SLOPER Wendy Hitter

ELIZABETHS ALMOND

Katharine Raht

ARTHUR TOWNSEND Craig Retty
MARIAN ALMOND Augusta Roeland
MORRIS TOWNSEND Peter Cookson
MRS. MONTGOMERY Betty Linley

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. An October evening. Scene 2. Two
weeks later. Scene 3. The following day. Act II. Scene 1. Sir months
later. Scene 2. Two hours later. Scene 3. Three days later. Scene 4. A
summer evening. Two years later.

Time: About 1850.

Place: The front parlor of Dr. Slopers home in Washington
Square, New York.

Director: Jed Harris.

T

JLHE RECENT revival of interest in the writings of Henry
James will scarcely be further promoted by this dramatiza-
tion of his novel Washington Square under the paper-back
title The Heiress. It is not that the playwrights have been
too disobedient to his theme, which is of so commonplace
a nature that any transgression does not matter much the
one way or the other; nor is it that they have done any ma-
jor violence to most of his characters, at least externally. It
is simply that, through the imagined strictures of their me-
dium, they have so scissored and scattered his style and in-
tent that what was literature becomes litter.

I appreciate that this is the conventional criticism of
many such efforts to transplant a literary work to the stage.
I also appreciate that with repetition it has become a little
wearisome to customers of the critical art. But, though it
may possibly be tricked now and then into some novelty of

56 The Heiress

expression and passed off on the less foxy reader for some-
thing fairly original, it remains the old simple fact and
as such is best to be expressed simply and without fancy
trimming.

It is the custom of the theatre in periods of disquiet and
discontent to hark back, not without a commercial gleam
In its eye, to periods of greater tranquillity. The theory in
the case is that the mood of tranquillity will be inculcated
in an audience with such consummate effect that it will be-
come blissfully oblivious of its earlier unrest. The theory
most often does not work any better than one which might
maintain that plays in a period of ease and contentment
which were full of bloody alarms would make audiences
feel like committing suicide on the spot. Once in a while
a play laid in the untroubled yesterdays may, it is true, di-
vert an audience from its immediate worldly concerns. But
the play that does so has to have something more than
handsome old-fashioned stage settings and costumes, wist-
ful allusions to institutions long since gone their purple
way or whimsical references to sirloin steaks at ten cents a
pound, and the emotions of innocent adolescence incor-
porated into characters of adult exteriors. The average
play of the species has little more than that and what nos-
talgia it evokes in its spectators is induced very much less
by its elaborately contrived echo of distance than by some
such minor stage property as a humorously recalled hand-
painted cuspidor or a sentimentally recollected old brocade
chair.

The weakness of The Heiress lies not only in at least
one such direction but in the circumstance that its story,
laid in the middle iSoo's, is not, as was that, say, of Life
With Father y particularly flavorous of its period and might
just as closely fit 1948 as 1848 or 1850. What it is to all stage
intents and purposes is merely another version of the old
plot of the bitter father who breaks up his daughter's love
affair with a young man on the ground that the latter is a
fortune hunter, of the desertion of the suitor when he
learns that the girl may be disinherited, of his eventual
contrite return, and of her realization of his worthlessness

September 29, 1947 57

and her rejection of him. In other words, if stripped of its
mid-nineteenth century stage trappings, indistinguishable
from a mid-twentieth century copy laid in a house on Fifth
or Park Avenue. For the notion that such people as figure
in the play and period must invariably have spoken with
a tongue approximating that of Henry James is akin to
the notion that such as figure in similarly placed plays to-
day generally speak with one like Harry James'. The moral
philosophy of the James fiction and of the play freely made
from it, along with much of the conduct of the chief char-
acters, finds its counterpart, moreover, in the drama of
more recent times. And so it is that the exhibit intrinsi-
cally impresses one as being largely a stale contemporary
play whose staleness has been optimistically camouflaged
in the setting and dress of a bygone era.

Aside from Life With Father, most of the attempts in
later seasons to recapture the sentimental essence of the
past, though here and there commercially successful, have
missed much critical satisfaction. I Remember Mama,
while it had its pleasant points, amounted in the aggre-
gate to little more than a box-office shrewdly draped with
antimacassars, hung with chromos of an old-time San Fran-
cisco, and perfumed with the smell of homemade cookies.
Years Ago, though it similarly enjoyed its moments, man-
ufactured its atmosphere largely with incorporated allu-
sions to personages and events of its period, and with such
obvious properties as unfamiliar telephones, two-pound
gold watch chains, and the like. The Damask Cheek, for
all some graceful prose, had the aspect of a revival of one
of Pinero's minor comedies strainfully adapted to the 1909
American scene with such lines as "She's been to the thea-
tre Sothern and Marlowe," "She went with Michael to
the Bioscope and the Judge took her to hear Burton
Holmes," and "I'd been to see The Easiest Way only the
week before." The Old Maid> laid in the middle iSoo's,
was, by the consent of everybody but the Pulitzer prize
committee, unadulterated dramatic rubbish of "The child
didn't know who her parents were; only that she was a
foundling whom a family had taken in" sort. And The

58 The Heiress

American Way,, laid in 1896 and the years following, was
a fabricated eye-wetter larded with the names of Mark
Twain, Admiral Dewey, William Jennings Bryan, McKin-
ley, Mark Hanna, etc., with such songs as "I'm Afraid To
Go Home In The Dark" and "Down Where The Wurz-
burger Flows," and with references to St. Nicholas maga-
zine and Lillian Russell cigars. Nor were any of the other
efforts to melt the trade critically any better.

It is the same with this The Heiress. All that it sums
up to is a pair of Raymond Sovey's heavy velour window
drapes drawn aside to let in a windy love story whose age
is condoned by laying it in a period when it was theatri-
cally fresher. Jed Harris' staging, now and then excellent,
more generally dispirits the evening by sinisterly treating
the script as if most of its characters were in imminent
danger of being foully murdered. Basil Rathbone's por-
trayal of the stern father is ably accomplished, but Wendy
Hiller in the role of the daughter, while at times valid, re-
lies too greatly on coy inhalations to suggest the character's
shyness and on sudden natural breathing to indicate mo-
mentary assurance. Peter Cookson is smooth as the fortune
hunter; Patricia Collinge, though given to believing that
there is nothing like a persistent smile and a head cocked
slightly backwards to register an enormous ebullience of
spirit, is at least one of the few actresses on our stage who
does not pronounce "at all" as if it were a ring-like coral
island inclosing a lagoon; and the others acquit themselves
handily.

HOW I WONDER. SEPTEMBER 30, 1947

A play by Donald Ogden Stewart. Produced by Ruth Gor-
don and Garson Kanin in association with Victor Samrock
and William Fields for 63 performances in the Hudson
Theatre.

PROGRAM

PROFESSOR LEMUEL STEVENSON

"Raymond Massey
AN UNUSUAL CHARACTER

Everett Sloane

WALTER SMITH Henry Jones

CLIFF SAUNDERS John Marriott
MARGARET STEVENSON

Carol Goodner

SYNOPSIS: Act I. After dinner in early June of this year. Act II.
Six the next afternoon. Act IE. Eight that night.

Scene: The roof -top of the home of Professor Lemuel Stevenson.
Director: Garson Kanin.

CHRISTINA STEVENSON

Bethel LesUe
GEORGE DRUMMOND

Byron McGrath

DR. HTT.T.KR John Sweet

LISA Meg Mundy

HENRY HARKRIDER Wyrley 'Birch

M,

LR. STEWART has been spending the last fifteen years in
Hollywood as a writer for the moving pictures. It is appar-
ent that, like many another writer for the moving pictures
in Hollywood, he has been thinking. Thinking is the fa-
vorite extra-professional exercise of such literati, particu-
larly those who before their fall were on the way to doing
creditable work.

The thinking uniformly takes a single course. It as-
sumes the form of a resolve to achieve absolution and
regain self-respect through a piece of writing, generally
dramatic, which will attest to the fact that prolonged im-
mersion in Hollywood has not, as is offensively supposed,
rotted what brains the thinker may previously have had
and that, on the contrary, he is still possessed of the upper-
crust talents which for so long he condescendingly sacri-
ficed to pecuniary riches.

The cerebration, flowering, thereupon develops into two

60 How I Wonder

bouquets. First, its impresario concludes that his dramatic
rebirth must take the shape of a performance which will
be so markedly oppugnant to everything in any manner
even distantly associated with the screen that people will
be transportedly set back on their tails by his inner con-
tempt for the medium and by his re-divulgation of his old,
real, admirable self, for years so lamentably suppressed.
Secondly, he cautiously decides, the performance must nev-
ertheless, despite its immaculate design, have in it elements
contributing to commercial success, since if it were to fail
he might not get an invitation to return to Hollywood and
would find himself with his chemise hanging out. Our cog-
itator thus frequently becomes the victim of his own con-
fusion and what he writes is neither fish, flesh nor fowl, but
only a marinated herring trailed across the road between
the films and the stage. His cerebral fruit, moreover,
which in his Hollywood surroundings has impressed him
as a veritable bolt from the blue and as something intellec-
tually revolutionary, has long since, he gloomily discovers,
become a platitude, and a doddery one, in the more cog-
nizant region of the drama. His dramatic devices, which
seemed to him so remarkably original and imaginative in
the stereotyped atmosphere of the pictures, have, he learns,
been employed time and again in the years he has been ab-
sent in that incinerator of talent. And even his commercial
sense, so fully developed in him by his film bosses, is often
at severe odds with that of the more sophisticated theatre
box-office. He finds himself, in short, in the position of one
who has been a prodigy in the films and who, attempting
to graduate himself from the intellectual low grade, is
shocked to realize that he is still just a Quiz Kid, without
the answers.

Mr. Stewart, who before he allowed Hollywood to pos-
sess him wrote one or two witty and humorous books and
even a comedy that contained some fair amusement, is the
latest example of what happens to many of these doomed
fellows. 'His apologia pro vita sua is called How I Wonder,
is labeled a comedy, and reflects his confusion by being no
comedy at all but, if anything, a fantasy, and as such itself

September SO, 1947 61

so utterly confused that it might as well be called anything
from a travesty to a greased pig chase with no damage
done.

So far as one is able to penetrate the muddle, it seems to
concern a professor who champions the brotherhood of
man in terms of astronomy, who consults with a male char-
acter representing his mind and with a female from an-
other planet representing his emotions, and who gets into
difficulties with his college for his resulting ideas, which is
not surprising. These ideas, intimated to be of enormous
weight, are not, however, imparted to the audience, Mr.
Stewart playing safe by merely assuring the latter that they
are something pretty special and dropping his curtain
whenever their mouthpiece is about to reveal them. Mixed
up with all this are the author's Brown Derby musings on
the perils inherent in the atom bomb, the advisability of
trusting one's heart rather than one's brain, the responsi-
bility of the individual in the restoration of a lasting peace
to the world, the danger implicit in shirking one's duties
in that direction, and similar overpoweringly unique top-
ics. And further churned into the concoction, as the reader
will have perceived, are such deciduous plot materials as
the liberal professor in conflict with reactionary authority
(the last recent example was Parlor Story) , such crumbling
devices as the personification of mind or conscience (vide
Overtones, The Great God Brown, Peep Show, etc.) , such
characters as the mysterious visitor from another planet
(The Red Light Of Mars, Venus, A Messenger From Mars,
and a dozen others) , and an attempt at Shavian irony
which consists in having the hero confidently proclaim the
opposite of what intelligent people intelligently think. A
contemplation of Mr. Stewart's mentality, in brief, must
inevitably recall the old story of the man who had prom-
ised to bring his friend a parrot on his return to France
from a visit in America. Arrived home, he suddenly be-
thought him that he had neglected his promise, went out,
purchased an owl, painted it green, and presented it to his
friend. Two weeks later, encountering the latter, he tim-
idly ventured to inquire how the parrot was and if he

62 How I Wonder

talked yet. "Talk? No," answered the friend. "But he
surely thinks a great deal."

Garson Kanin, who directed the play, made a valiant ef-
fort to clarify it and bring it into some intelligible design.
Though he worked some mild order into the chaos, it was
far from enough. What we got remained an exhibit whose
author had pretentiously reached for the stars, both liter-
ally and figuratively, and who had brought down only a
bunch of Kleig lights, all burnt out from Hollywood over-
use.

Raymond Massey and the rest of the company were up
against a tough assignment. That they did not break out
with laughter at the absurdity of it was a credit to their
professional acting training, if not to their, intelligence.

63

COMMAND DECISION. OCTOBER i, 1947

A play by William Wister Haines. Produced by Kermit
Bloomgarden for the rest of the season's performances in
the Fulton Theatre.

PROGRAM

TECH. SERGEANT HAROLD EVANS

James Whitmore
WAR CORRESPONDENT ELMER

BRQCKHURST Edition By an

BRIGADIER GENERAL K. C. DENNIS

Paul Kelly
COLONEL ERNEST HALEY

Ne&O'Mattey

MAJOR BELDING DAVIS Robert Pike
ENLISTED ARMED GUARD

West Hooker
CAPTAIN Lucius JENXS

Arthur Franz
MAJOR GENERAL ROLAND

GOODLOW KANE Jay Fassett

BRIGADIER GENERAL CLIFTON C.
GARNETT Paul McGrath

The entire action of the play takes place in the office of Brigadier
General K. C. Dennis at the headquarters of the 5th American Bombard-
ment Division, Heavy, in England.

SYNOPSIS: Act I. About 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon. Act II.
Scene 1. About 10 p.m. the same evening. Scene 2. Sunday noon, the fol-
lowing day. Act HI. Sunday, the same day. About 8 p.m.

Director: John O'Shaughnessy.

MAJOR HOMER PBESCOTT

WtiMamLayton
COLONEL EDWARD MARTIN

Stephen EUiott
LT. JAKE GOLDBERG

John Randolph
MAJOR DESMOND LANSING

Lewis Martin
MAJOR RDFUS DAYHUFF

Walter Black

MR. ARTHUR MALCOLM Paul Ford
MR. OLIVER STONE Frank McNeUis
N.C.O. PHOTOGRAPHER Ed Btnns
CAPTAIN G. W. C, LEE

James H olden

T

XHI

LHE BEST of the American plays to come out of World
War II remains Harry Brown's^ Sound Of Hunting. Here
is three-fourths of an effective runner-up. Drawing on a
first-hand knowledge of his subject matter, Mr. Haines
tells the story of a commander of a heavy bomber outfit
whose single purpose is to wipe out the three potentially
dangerous jet-plane factories deep in German territory
and beyond the range of fighter cover and who, because of

64 Command Decision

the enormous loss of lives and materiel involved, is op-
posed by politically minded officials in Washington. These,
despite his sound and resolute conviction that the sacrifice
is vital to the winning of the war and the ultimate sparing
of countless men, contrive his dismissal and the installa-
tion in his place of a commander who may be more tracta-
ble. But the latter, persuaded of his predecessor's accurate
judgment, gives orders to pursue the third of the missions,
come hell or high water.

This main dramatic current is handled by the author
with a firm audacity, with a complete honesty, and with a
sharp dramatic drive. Three-fourths of his play, which hew
to his line, are thus consequently not only good theatre but
alive drama, if of a fundamentally recognizable nature.
But in the belief that some sentimental relief is essential to
theatrical success, he drags in for the other fourth a mess of
moist hokum about solicitous wives back home, the birth
of a son to one of the fliers, and kindred hearts-and-flowers
stuff which horns into his drama's forthright quality and
lends it that greasepaint softness which has been character-
istic of so many English war plays and which has made
them appear to be collaborations between a military man
and a second-rate actress. It is not that the sentiment may
not in itself be true. It is once again simply that it is not
made to seem so by the playwright and that it accordingly
impresses orie as having been mechanically lugged into the
play much as a torch song is incorporated into a musical
show to lend contrast and give relief to a succession of
hotsy-totsy numbers. It produces the feeling that the drama
has gone off on intermittent furloughs, since on its several
returns it takes it some time to pick up where it left off
and to get going again.

Aside from these unfortunate interludes, however, Mr.
Haines has written directly, forcibly, and without compro-
mise. He is tough without being common, and melodra-
matic without being cheap. He has accomplished, further,
a realistic duplication of his characters' hard speech with-
out recourse to the usual extended profanity and pseudo-
colorful obscenity. When he has need of such expression,

October l y 1947 65

it proceeds in both its dramatic and humorous phases from
what is acceptable as unvarnished character delineation.
Even when there is a trace of seeming exaggeration, as in
the case of the pair of Congressmen visiting command
headquarters, the character drawing is basically true
enough. The general writing may not have much distinc-
tion and the play by any scrupulous standard of criticism
may be amiss, but, apart from its periods of sentimentality,
it manages somehow to lift itself above critical deprecia-
tion while in stage action and to seem for the time being
superior to itself. Which is always a good trick if a play-
wright can do it.

The circumstance that a play may be of some recognized
theatrical merit does not, however, always necessarily guar-
antee that a critic who properly records the fact will find it
personally engrossing. This, in my case, is to some extent
such a play. It is, as I have duly noted, possessed of its un-
mistakable virtues, but a considerable share of its detail,
also duly noted as being unquestionably authentic, eludes
my equipment of appreciation. Professionally, I respect the
author's extensive knowledge of his subject matter in so
far as it concerns everything from precision bombing to
meteorological data and from the nature of targets and
enemy resistance to aviation mortality statistics. But per-
sonally I remain a theatre attendant who is not especially
fascinated by the topics. While bowing to Mr. Haines' edu-
cation in such directions, I do not find them dramatically
stimulating. It is the same with books. Give me the ablest
book ever written on some such subject as the ice-flows in
the Polar regions or the love life of Zapus hudsonius and,
though my respect for it may be of unheard of proportions,
I will give it right back to you. The critic and the man, for
all the tempting argument to the contrary, are sometimes
two different creatures. It is one thing to appreciate that
a play is good; it is occasionally and refractorily another
thing to enjoy it.

The acting company, with one exception, is excellent,
notably Paul Kelly as the Patton of the air forces, James
Whitmore as his ribald technical sergeant, Jay Fassett as

66 Command Decision

his fearful superior in command, Stephen Elliott as a self-
less colonel loyal to his chief, Lewis Martin as a cynical ma-
jor of intelligence, Paul Ford as a Congressional stuffed-
shirt, and James Holden as a youthful flier. The exception
is Paul McGrath in the role of the ambitious brigadier
general who succeeds to the command of the Fifth Bom-
bardment Division. McGrath, as is his habit, so attitudi-
nizes and so enchants himself listening to the solovox tones
which he manufactures out of his larynx that one misses
the entrance of Dorothy Kirsten to serve him in a duet.
John O'Shaughnessy's direction is fully competent save at
such times as he indulges the actors in long pauses and
studious perambulations to suggest their seizures of deep
and troubled concern. Jo Mielziner's setting and lighting
are appropriately realistic.

67

MUSIC IN MY HEART. OCTOBER 5, 1947

A "romantic musical play" with Tchaikovsky music
adapted by Franz Steininger, lyrics by Forman Brown, and
book by Patsy Ruth Miller. Produced by Henry Duffy for
124 performances in the Adelphi Theatre.

PROGRAM

TAIIANAKERSEAYA Vwienne Segal
MISCHA George Lambrose

PEIER ILYCH TCHAIKOVSKY

Robert Carroll

DESIRKEARTOT MarthaWright
MAUBICE CABANNE Jan Murray
CAPT. NICHOLAS GBEGOROVTTCH

Charles Fredericks
IVAN PETROFSEC James Starbuck
NATUSCHA 'Dorothy Etheridge

GYPSY Jean Handztik

JOSEPH Robert Hay den

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. Ballet. "The Storm." Scene 1A. Stage
of Odeon Theatre, St. Petersburg. Scene 2. The Cafe Samovar. A few
weeks later. Act n. Scene 1. Nikkfs country house. A month later. Scene
2. Road to St. Petersburg. That night. Scene 3. Foyer of Imperial Opera
House. A few weeks later. Scene 4. Stage of Imperial Opera House. A
few minutes later, (a) Ballet. "Beauty and the Beast' 9 (b) Love Song.
Scene 5. Backstage of Imperial Opera House.

Director: Hassard Short.

PRINCESS KATHERINE DOLGORUKI

Delia Lind

OLGA Pauline Goddard

MESSENGER OF THE TSAR

Edward White

SONYA Jeanne Shelby

VERA REMISOVA Olga Suarez

LORD CHAMBERLAIN Ealph Glover
PBTMA BALLERINA Olga Suarez
PREMIER DANSEUR

Nicholas MagaUanes

T

AHJ

FOREMOST attribute of the show is Tchaikovsky's
music under his name and not, as has been the practice,
under that of one or another Tin Pan Alley kleptomaniac.
While certain of the arrangements of his compositions take
liberties of Stokowskian proportions, the music in sufficient
measure is allowed to remain his own, which comes as a
gratifying relief from the Broadway habit of improving it
either with passages cabbaged from Harry Von Tilzer and
Raymond Hubbell or manufactured by the tunesmith gen-
iuses aforesaid. The virtues of the occasion, however, stop

68 Music in My Heart

there. The book is the one common to the species and, as
usual in many of these exhibits about celebrated compos-
ers, involves the music master with a fair creature and
builds up, grossly to misuse the term, to the final scene of
their separation and the heart-broken return of the master
to his art. Additionally involved is the consoling episode of
his belated recognition and the tribute paid to him by the
reigning royalty of the period.

The language in which the affecting tale is couched is
not less stock than the plot. "She is lovely like a flower/'
sighs the composer upon gazing for the first time on his
lady-love. "You are a genius," proclaims the latter, "and
some day everybody will know it." At due intervals, some-
one or other wistfully ventures a "Do you remember?"
something or other, which, whatever it is that is summoned
to memory, is of a tenderly sentimental nature. And in a
more positive direction, there is, of course, the "Ah, Paris,
what memories it holds for me!" The humor is scarcely
richer. "I am mistress of the ballet," laments the elderly
comedienne. "That's the only kind of mistress I can still
be." "I might have worn sables and mink," warbles the
same lady, "but I ended with squirrel and skunk." "Do
you recall that wonderful night I came to your room and
we loved each other?" inquires the comedian. "Was that
you?" returns the comedienne.

Among the performers, Martha Wright, an understudy
elevated to the leading woman's role, makes the best im*
pression. She is attractive physically and offers a very fair,
if at times over-reaching, soprano, but remains to be in-
structed in the spoken word and in such pronunciations as
"modom" for "madame." Charles Fredericks, a meritori-
ous baritone, is miscast as the lover who weans the heroine,
the Desire Artot of Tchaikovsky's passion, from the com-
poser; he is more at home in a Show Boat than in a Czar-
ist Russian court. Robert Carroll's Tchaikovsky consists
mainly in playing the piano as if the late Helen Morgan
were sitting atop it and in bowing from the waist fourteen
or fifteen times and kissing ladies' hands. Vivienne Segal,
always amusing if she has the necessary material, on this

October 2, 1947 69

occasion hasn't it; and Jan Murray in the comedian role
would not be amusing even if he had it. A "Beauty And
The Beast" ballet, abstemiously danced, adds to the eve-
ning's malaises, as do scenic backgrounds that look as if
they had been desperately painted an hour before the cur-
tain rang up.

While sitting out a variety of these musical plays, musi-
cal comedies and operettas a thought, peculiarly enough
under the circumstances, has insinuated itself into my
head. To wit, that though all sorts of things are admittedly
wrong with the world we are presently in, matters might
be a damned sight worse. Consider, for instance, what it
would be like to live in one patterned after and identical
with such conjecturally idealistic and romantic shows.
That they may now and then constitute an escape from the
troubled world is perfectly acceptable so far as it goes, but
the escape, if any, ends in and with the theatre. Were life
to be like one of them, or like a hundred of them operat-
ing in unison, the sigh for flight back into the world, pox-
ful though it may be, would be heard beyond interstellar
space.

A world resembling one great big musical show would,
it is contrarily imagined, be pretty fine all around: appe-
tizing girls, lovely songs, soft lights, wonderful scenery,
champagne and kisses, romantic love, and all the rest. On
the surface, maybe; but scarcely otherwise. In the first
place, one would never stand the ghost of a chance with
the beautiful female upon whom one's heart was passion*
ately set, the heroine of one's dreams. That is, save one
were a tenor, which one probably would not admit if one's
life were at stake. No man, except in the rarest of cases,
ever gets the lovely lady unless he* has the kind of voice
that is good for the bum's rush in any barroom this side of
Piccadilly. If, in any musical comedy or operetta, one with
a bass voice ever made the slightest headway with the star
beauty, the records do not indicate it. Think, moreover, of
starting the day, before breakfast and before one has even
had a chance to shave, with thirty-two girls smeared up
with carmine face-paint buzzing coyly around one and din-

70 Music in My Heart

ning a song into one's ears about how jolly life is at that
time in the morning. And then, when the girls have finally
left one alone, think of a fat comedian getting hold of one,
who is still rubbing the sleep out of one's eyes and proba-
bly suffering from a hangover, and bombarding one with
jokes about marriage, the Dodgers, and Mr. Goldfarb's lit-
tle son Fitzroy.

You allow that you agree on the morning agony but, ah,
you cry, the rest of the day and night! Yet what of living
constantly in the glare of a sizzling, white, hot spotlight?
How would you relish having around you at regular half-
hour intervals a dozen carbon dioxide showgirls six and a
half feet tall who would haughtily look down upon you as
a worm? And how would you like to smack your lips at the
popping of champagne bottles and then get in your glass
nothing but five-cent ginger-ale? You may be discontented
with your last year's suit, your frayed shirt and your shoes
that need resoling, but after a week or so I entertain a fur-
ther suspicion that you would be pretty uncomfortable
and ready to call quits when it came to wearing heavy vel-
vet capes and fancy silk knee breeches, or, God wot, huzzar
uniforms. And don't overlook the greasy pink makeup.
What is more, in a world conducted after the pattern of
operetta and musical comedy, you would get nothing to
eat. It is a phenomenon of such shows that their inhab-
itants seem to exist without any sustenance whatsoever. In
all the operettas and musical comedies of the last fifty years
the only food that has been visible on the stage at any
time has been a few bananas and even those few bananas
were not in The Merry Widow for forty-odd years but
were allowed into a revival of it for the first time only a
few seasons ago. ^

There is, too, the matter of drink. In a world indistin-
guishable from musical comedy and operetta you would
be condemned to celebrate the joys of alcoholic liquor
and even bourgeois beer with glasses and mugs that
did not contain so much as a drop of the stuff. Yet you
would be expected to be as gay as a chipmunk and at
times to stagger about inebriously as if you had just

October 2, 1947 71

emerged from a fortnight's holiday in the Mouton Roths-
child caves.

In general hideous illustration, consider New York as it
would be if this Mr. Henry Duffy, the Shuberts and our
other impresarios were under the new dispensation to be
in charge of the city. Either Milton Berle or this Jan Mur-
ray would probably be Mayor and your breakfast table
newspaper, in lieu of giving you news as at present, would
regale you with quotations of His Honor's jokes as of the
day before. Instead of reading about the municipality's
various activities, you would get an endless dose of stuff
like this:

Mayor: Why did they call former Mayor La Guardia
"Bud"?

Taxpayer: I dunno. Why?

Mayor: His name was Fiorello, or Little Flower. Bud.
See?

The New York Times' City Hall reporter's story would
run as follows: "Mayor Berle informed the Times in an
exclusive interview yesterday that he heard two chickens
talking and one said sarcastically to the other, l Listen, Hor-
tense, I don't like to be an old cluck but I read in the pa-
per that former Mayor O'Dwyer once laid a cornerstone/ "

The Herald Tribune story would in turn cover City
Hall thus: "Asked whether as a baseball player Eisenhower
could have beaten him around the bases, Mayor Berle re-
plied, 'He could not! You'll recall he promised not to
run/ "

If Jan Murray, on the other hand, were the city's chief
executive, the Daily News story would probably be:
"Mayor Murray said yesterday that he was expecting a let-
ter from the Big Three and that they should have arrived
at a decision. Asked whether by the Big Three he referred
to Truman, Attlee and Stalin, the Mayor turned a somer-
sault and cracked, 'No. Hart, Schaffner and Marx. I owe
'em three bucks/ "

The waiters in all the restaurants would be comedians,
would balance the soup plates on their heads, and would
scare the daylights out of you for fear of dropping them on

72 Music in My Heart

your lap. When you finally got the soup safely in front of
you on the table, you would find a needle in it and would
perforce indignantly call the waiter's attention to it. The
waiter would then invariably reply, "Sorry, sir. That's just
a typographical error; it should be noodle/' All the head-
waiters would be directed by George Abbott and would
gallop madly to and fro, knocking you out of your chair,
the while the similarly directed bus boys would dash fran-
tically at two minute intervals to the lavoratory, their
mouths covered with their hands.

The city's new buildings would be designed by Oliver
Smith and other such music show scenic architects and
would all be lopsided. Mike Todd would be a Commis-
sioner of Parks and Central Park would be chock-a-block
with coloratura sopranos howling their heads off. The
thoroughfares would be full of Agnes de Mille ballet danc-
ers with calves the size of oil kegs, all jumping up and
down like kangaroos, and if you tried to crowd your way
through them to cross the street the Irish cops, instead of
assisting you, would hail you with a "Begorra, and do yez
think you're a chicken? Why does a chicken cross the
road?", thereupon hitting you over the head with stuffed
clubs. Your head would sprout two small red and green
balloons, and under the city ordinance it would be incum-
bent upon you forthwith to execute a prattfall. The traf-
fic lights, incidentally, would not be simply red and green
but red, green, purple, blue, mauve, vermilion, yellow,
peachbloom and chartreuse, and you would become so con-
fused that you would drive your automobile right through
the window of Saks-Fifth Avenue and would not be able
to stop until you landed in the ladies' room, where you
would be arrested as a Peeping Tom by a platinum-haired
policeman in a short skirt. When you arrived at the police
court, the judge, in all probability Bobby Clark, would
wallop you over the head with a bladder, squirt water into
your face through his puckered lips, and jump violently
onto your lap and imbed your nether-section in a tack
which the court attendant had scrupulously poised on the
witness chair.

October 2, 1947 73

Should you pass a fair creature on the street, should she
hintfully drop her 'kerchief and should you gallantly make
to retrieve it, she would snap it back with a rubber string
and reward your efforts with an arch "Oo-la-la," which
would be no end embarrassing, since your wife would on
all occasions necessarily be just coming around the corner
and would humiliate you by seizing you by the ear and
leading you cringing from the scene. The Fire Department
would be manned entirely by dyed blondes who would go
to fires perched cheesecakewise on cardboard apparatus
and appropriately singing ."You Can Go To Blazes" in
voices which would eliminate the need for the sirens. And
when you died, you would be interred in Cain's store-
house, with Toplitzky Of Notre Dame.

You still believe that to live in a world like Gypsy Lady
would be delightfully romantic? Have you ever smelled
gypsys? You still think that existence as pictured in La Vie
Parisienne would be ideal? Have you ever taken a good
look at nine-tenths of the French midinettes, to say noth-
ing of at ten-tenths of the French opera stars? You still im-
agine that if the world were like The Merry Widow it
would be one constant, unending gala at Maxim's? Have
you, even in days long before the wars, ever studied those
female gargoyles smeared with sickly blue-green makeup,
or been charged twenty American dollars for a dollar bot-
tle of champagne nature artfully wrapped in a six-dollar
monogrammed bath towel, or been bamboozled out of five
dollars for a four-franc bunny toy, or eaten horse kidneys
slavered with mayonnaise? You envy the romantic world of
this Music In My Heart? Have you ever been cornered for
even five minutes by the conversation of a musician, or
have you contemplated the joys of living with a female op-
eratic star?

The world, to repeat, has many things wrong with it but,
everything considered, the Shuberts be praised that it is not
run like operetta and musical comedy. It is not demanded
of one that one arbitrarily stop in one's love-making at ten
p.m. sharp and go into a waltz with one's best girl, only to
be slapped in the face by her at its conclusion and to be

74 Music in My Heart

told that one is a dog and that she wishes never to lay eyes
on one again. It is not ordered of one that one burst into
song every time the moon comes out, or that one joyously
attend banquets at which nothing is served, or that one go
wild over ravishing princesses who look like something any
high-toned cat would decline to bring in. As things are,
one furthermore is not compelled to look out of one's win-
dow and go into raptures over the beauty of a Lake Como
painted by a blob-artist on a piece of canvas; one need not
kneel and humbly kiss the hand of every frowzy old scare-
crow nominally a Duchess; one need not go around all day
with an idiotic grin on one's face; and one doesn't have to
wear tights.

75

UNDER THE COUNTER. OCTOBER 3, 1947

A comedy with music, play by Arthur Macrae, music by
Manning Sherwin, and lyrics by Harold Pur cell. Produced,
by the Shuberts in association with Lee Ephraim for 27
performances in the Shubert Theatre.

PROGRAM

EVA WinxfredHindle

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR BAXTER

Francis Roberts
MIKE KENBERIHNE

Battard Berkeley

TIM GARRET Thorley Walters

Jo Fox Cicely Courtneidge

MR, BURROUGHS George Street

SYNOPSIS: The play takes place in Jo Foxs house in London.
Act I. Monday afternoon. Act II. Scene 1. Wednesday morning. Scene 2.
Thursday evening. Act HE. Friday morning.

Director: Jack HtJbert.

ZOE TRITTON Glen Alyn

KITTY Ingrid Forrest

SIR Ausc DUNNE

Wtlfrid Hyde White
LT. CMDR. HUGO CONWAY,

R.N.V.R. John Gregory

MR* APPUEYARD Frederick Farley

PACK IN THE 1870'$, an American actress-manager, Alice
Gates by name, found to her surprise that things were not
going too well with the atrociously bad comedies she was
offering and brewed the idea of making them seem less
atrociously bad by incorporating some distracting songs
into them. The idea worked, and Gates gathered in the
money. Operating on the same theory, the purveyors of
this Under The Counter., doubtless realizing that the
straight comedy in their possession was about as heinous
as they come, have added tunes to it but have found to
their dismay that American audiences have in some myste-
rious manner slightly advanced in the seventy-odd years
since the Gates era and that the anticipated money-gather-
ing has not materialized. The circumstance that their show
ran for two full seasons in its native London conceivably
might provide a bit of critical comment at this point, but
politeness restrains me.

76 Under the Counter

The comedy, or more accurately farce, which serves as
the basis of the evening is still another version of the
ancient business about an actress' involvement with her
various eager suitors, in this instance optimistically be-
queathed a modern flavor with references to black market
activities, the eccentricities of British civil servants, and
Selfridge's department store. It is, on its own, quite terri-
ble and is hardly improved by musical numbers composed
in the key of cold-water flat and lyrics sufficiently suggested
by such titles as "No One's Tried To Kiss Me," "Let's Get
Back To Glamour/' and, in the case of a Russian attempt,
"Ai Yi Yi," to say nothing of by a chorus number in which
Miss Courtneidge drives the girls with imaginary reins, an-
other in which she is lifted aloft by the girls and carried off
in a recumbent position on their bent backs, in that pos-
ture executing a droll pose with her chin coyly posed on
her forefinger, and still another in which, as a Muscovite
ballerina, she finds her large hat constantly falling over her
eyes and hilariously bumps seven or eight times into her
partner.

Miss Courtneidge, long a London favorite, is on the
stage from the first curtain to the last and labors so hard
that, if the current English government had had any sense,
it would have utilized her to solve the coal problem single-
handed. There is not a moment when she isn't capering
about the stage, lustily slapping her thighs, frantically dust-
ing off the furniture with her handkerchief, making faces,
rolling around on couches, arching her body far over
chairs, and conducting herself generally like a chamois giv-
ing an audition for George Abbott. It is to be regretted
that the humor which proceeds from her convulsions is on
the lean side. Her support, except for an Australian siren
named Glen Alyn, who has little to do but at least does it
quietly sitting down, and for a Charles Butterworth type
of comedian named Wilfred Hyde White, is rickety. The
ladies of the ensemble are, however, rather more comely
than those usually exported in such enterprises.

77

DEAR JUDAS. OCTOBER 5, 1947

A dramatization by Michael Myerberg of the poem by Rob-
inson Jeffers, with music by Johann Sebastian Bach ar-
ranged by Lehmann Engel. Produced by Michael Myer-
berg for 16 performances in the Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

THE CARPENTER Per di Hoffman
JUDAS Roy Hargrave

THE WOMAN Margaret Wycherly
LAZARUS Harry Irvine

Scene: The garden.
Director: Michael Myerberg.

{PETER Tony CharmoU
SIMON Richard Astor
JOHN Betts Lee

W

T T3HL

HAT ARE SOMETIMES indiscriminately referred to as
Biblical plays often suffer from their producers* belief that
there is but one proper way to stage them and that is with
an air of extreme solemnity. This solemnity, moreover, is
defined by them not only as merely of a formal or ceremo-
nious character but as something closely approximating
the behavior of paid mourners, all in the agonized grip of
cholera morbus, at the services for an unidentified small-
pox victim conducted by Feodor Dostoievski. Enveloped
by mortuary lighting, the actors are either made to walk
the stage as if they were carrying two-hundred-pound alba-
trosses on their backs or, when called upon to indicate ex-
altation of the spirit, to comport their corpuses as if they
had suddenly been afflicted with a benign rigor mortis.
Their features, in addition, are directed into one of two
patterns: an expression intimating that an acute colic has
elevated itself into their countenances, or one suggesting
that they have got a painful cinder in their eyes and are fol-
lowing the old recommendation that the best way to get it
out is to throw the head backwards, look hard at the ceil-
ing, and blink the upper lids ten times in rapid succession.

78 Dear Judas

Only on rare occasions, as in the case of Family Portrait,
are the plays allowed to behave themselves otherwise. And
the natural result is that people are as depressed by them,
whatever their possible share of internal merit, as they are
depressed by dank walls, funeral music, the spectacle of
pain, or Charles Rann Kennedy.

This Dear Judas, fashioned from the Robinson Jeffers
poem, suffers from the pox as seriously as have most exhib-
its of the species. Nor is the play, which views Judas in a
more favorable light than the traditional, of sufficient
strength to triumph over the mopes imposed upon it. It
isn't that high resolve the mark of Mr. Meyerberg as a
producer has not gone into the production. From the
Bach choral embellishments to the incidental choreogra-
phy, the intention to do well by the dramatic stage is clear.
It is rather that a script which can not stand up to its pro-
ducer's faith in it has been further wobbled as theatre by
the frequent imposition upon it of a misguided, declama-
tory and too sanctimonious staging and direction. Much
more simply presented, it would still be very far from a
good play, but it might possibly seem better than it pres-
ently does, at least to that liberal portion of an audience
which blissfully accepts a shrewd stage economy as hintful
of a recondite and doubtless super-duper dramatic imag-
ination.

Jeffers* retrospective attitude toward the character of Ju-
das, which so outraged the Mayor and official censor of the
city of Boston that they indicated they would ban the play
were it to be booked in that city, is hardly as sensationally
novel as those who plainly have not read their Gospel since
childhood seem to imagine. Various celebrated literary fig-
ures in the past have also treated Iscariot in a manner not
unlike Jeffers, who rationalizes his betrayal of Christ as an
attempt to save Him from a course which he, Judas, feels
will undo Him and weaken His influence over the people.
The approach to the character, while controversial, has
some basis in analytical research. It is unquestionably
rather the character of Jesus, portrayed as being of a vio-
lence not commonly associated with Him, which emerges

October 5, 1947 79

on the stage with discomfiture to the pious, though here,
too, there is some substantiation in Holy Writ. The fault,
however, is not so much in the writing, indifferent as it is,
as in the theatrical presentation of the Christ in the per-
son of an actor whose previous appearance was as the po-
tential murderer in the melodramatic thriller Angel Street,
who proclaims the Jeffers line after the manner of the Jack
Daltons in the old ten-twenty-thirties, who is clad in a
plaid shirt and leather booted costume not unlike Bert
Lahr's in his old Winter Garden wood-chopper song num-
ber, and who looks very much like a bewhiskered college
football player of the iSgo's.

The Jeffers verse, occasionally not without a felicity in
phrasing, more generally misses the ring of beauty, the vi-
brance and the silver irony that the drama demands. As it
stands, it is overladen with monotony and underladen with
that spark, whether genuine or fraudulent, without which
Biblical drama languishes, either critically or commer-
cially, into failure.

The acting performances are uniformly poor. Hoffman's
Christ is an uninterrupted succession of hands extended
with palms upward orchestrated to the kind of vocal boom-
ing associated with the Marcus Superbuses of the old Chris-
tian versus Pagan lion-pit plays of the last century. Har-
grave's Judas, in the dress of a Humphrey Bogart, seems
just to have stepped out of a gangster film. Miss Wycherly's
Mary the Mother is resolved into a series of woebegone
drones, beatific liftings of the face to the flies, and albatross
underprops. And Harry Irvine's Lazarus intones the role
into his shoes. The Bach chorals are handled well enough,
though some shading would help. The choreography by
Esther Junger is set largely to a single stiff pattern which
gradually acquires a burlesque effect. And the setting of
the garden by Albert Johnson includes something supposed
to be a gnarled fig tree which, like the trees, whatever they
are, of most scene designers, looks like no tree ever contem-
plated or produced by nature. I have now seen something
like four or five thousand trees on the stage and the only
occasions on which one looked anything like a tree was

80 Dear Judas

when the play in which it figured was performed al fresco.
Beholding the arboreal specimens in the usual stage pro-
duction, I find myself jingling, "Poems are made by fools
like me, But only God can't make a tree like Jo Miel-
ziner."

81

DUET FOR TWO HANDS. OCTOBER 7, 1947

A so-called psychological melodrama by Mary Hayley Bell.
Produced by Robert Reud for 7 performances in the Booth
Theatre.

PROGRAM

ABIGAIL SARCLET Joyce Redman
HEKDA SABCLET Wynne Clark

FLEITY Ruth Vivian

EDWARD SARCLET

Francis L. Sullivan
STEPHEN CASS Hugh Marlowe

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in Forsinard Castle, the Ork-
neys. The time is midsummer, 1904. Act I. Scene 1. Sunset. Scene 2.
Three hours later. Act n. Scene 1. The next morning. Scene 2. That
night. Scene 3. Dawn, the foUouxng morning.

Director: Reginald Denham.

T

JLHI

LoNix)N EXPORT is one of the most ridiculous, non-
sensical and preposterous seriously intended plays beheld
on the stage in years, and is not so awfully dull at that. De-
signed as a melodramatic psychological study, it asks us to
believe that, if the hands of a man wrongly accused of mur-
der were to be grafted onto the wrists of a poet who had
lost his own in an accident, the graftee, though as upright,
moral and circumspect as a church deacon, would suddenly
feel himself possessed not only of startling amorous pro-
clivities but of potential homicidal tendencies which, if let
go, might conceivably exceed those of the curator of Bu-
chenwald. It further bids us to believe that his release from
the hellish situation is effected only when he learns that
the alien hands* twitchings are not bent on miscellaneous
slaughter but are simply indications that their original
owner wishes justice be done in the case of the surgeon
who betrayed him. Nor does the invitation to surrender to
absurdity stop there. The play is so full of it, in the way of
character drawing and almost everything else, that so much
as one second's reflection would make one laugh louder
than at the spectacle of Bobby Clark's feet grafted on Mau-
rice Schwartz. But the oddity is that one somehow is nev-

82 Duet for Two Hands

ertheless frequently persuaded to remit the wholesale bosh
and to lend oneself to the moonshine much as one lends
oneself to a belief in hair growers, California wines, and
women.

Because of the histrionic physiology of the play, it is not,
moreover, too hard. Surely no harder than believing, as the
late lamented James Agate noted, in the ghost in Hamlet,
Bottom's metamorphosis into an ass, or the pretence that a
young female has only to put on doublet and hose to be-
come completely unrecognizable to her lover. Or, as the
still miraculously extant Nathan has from time to time ob-
served, in at least one-third of the stuff on the contempo-
rary stage. At plays like Miss Bell's, one no more asks em-
barrassing questions of oneself than again to quote Ag-
ate one asks in a loftier quarter why Sophocles first
warns CEdipus that he is going to slay his father and marry
his mother and then makes him kill a man old enough to
be his father and marry a woman old enough to be his
mother.

Hoping to assist the poppycock into some acceptability,
the producer printed this note in the program: "The New
York World-Telegram of September 9, 1947, published a
report to the American College of Surgeons of an opera-
tion that equipped a fingerless hand with thumb and large
finger. The reporting surgeons Drs. James B. Brown,
Bradford Cannon and Walter G. Graham said that the
thumb and finger retained the sense of touch, muscular
power and prehensility." The producer unfortunately
failed to include with the note another relevantly explain-
ing just how the transplanted thumb and finger might in-
fluence the acquisitor's mind to the point where it would
make him a shoplifter or dealer of aces from the bottom of
the deck.

Francis L. Sullivan's first-rate performance of the scoun-
drelly surgeon did much to lend some bogus credence to
the play's asininity, as did Joyce Redman's intelligently ex-
aggerated, third-rate performance of his psychically tor-
tured daughter. Wynne Clark, as the latter's perplexed
aunt, helped further by reading her senseless lines so in-

October 7, 1947 83

distinctly that one could not make out what she was talk-
ing about. In this she was ably assisted by Ruth Vivian in
the role of the old household servant. Hugh Marlowe char-
acterized the sensitive poet mainly by making up his face
with a heavy layer of whitewash and not having had his
hair cut for a month. Reginald Denham's staging included
a wind machine that ferociously blew the Orkney coast
outside the French windows but somehow peculiarly re-
frained from mussing in the least the coiffures of the actors
who ventured out of doors.

MAN AND SUPERMAN. OCTOBER 8, 1947

A revival of the forty-four year old comedy by George Ber-
nard Shaw. Produced by Maurice Evans for the rest of the
season's performances in, initially, the Alvin Theatre.

PROGRAM

ROEBUCK RAJMSDEN Malcolm Keen
MAID Miriam Stovatt

OCTAVTUS ROBINSON

Chester Stratton

JOHN TANNER Maurice Evans

ANN WHTTEFIELD Frances Rotve

MRS. WHITEF.! KLD

Josephine Brown

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Roebuck Ramsden's study, Portland Place,
London,. 1905. Act II. The coachyard of the Whitefield Residence, near
Richmond. Act HI. The patio of a viUa in Granada 9 Spain.

Director: Maurice Evans.

Miss RAMSDEN Phoebe Mackay
VIOLET ROBINSON

Carmen Mathews

HENRY STRAKER Jack Manning
HECTOR MALONE, JR. Tony Bickley
HECTOR MALONE, SR.

Victor Sutherland

I

.T is THE FATE o the Whig in drama to be converted by
time into the semblance of a Tory, and that is what has be-
fallen Shaw, at least in the case of such of his plays as this
Man and Superman. Originally regarded as something
quite philosophically saucy, despite its obvious ideational
derivation from Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Co., it pres-
ently with the passing of the years seems to be as respectably
tame and conservative as an elderly ex-playboy who, though
fond of recalling himself as a hell-raiser, has married and
wryly settled down. Its wit, once shocking to the easily
shockable, suggests now a frock coat at a wienie roast, and
its theme of the pursuit of the male by the female, once
viewed as boldly venturesome, seems as audacious as the
Prince's wooing of Cinderella.

It is an 61d story, of course, that what has appeared dra-
matically insurgent to one generation frequently takes on
the sound of whimsical popgunnery to a later one. Ibsen,
who slammed a door to open it and who startled a dra-

October 8, 1947 85

matic world sitting prettily on the gilt chairs of Pinero and
his contemporary interior decorators, in due course so
came to be looked upon as a sedate, if less parochial, vil-
lage schoolmaster, Wilde's epigrammatic derisions, re-
garded as exceptionally impertinent and unblushing, be-
came the favorite quotations of precocious bobby-soxers.
Sartre in a very much briefer space of time has already this
soon found his Existentialism spelled without the first s.
And so, in the instance of his plays like this one, with Shaw.

The great man's whip-cracking disquisitions on the Life
Force, socialism, free love and the like, which in earlier
days earned him a reputation for intellectual courage and
impudence neck-and-neck with that of Brieux for his own
against social disease, race suicide and the defects in the
system of criminal justice, present today, as do the latter's,
the appearance of lame platitudes attempting a jig. Such of
his nip-ups as "That's the devilish side of a woman's fas-
cination: she makes you will your own destruction" and
"It is the self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most
recklessly," once esteemed as themselves pretty devilish,
are belatedly recognized, with a pang, as having been that
long ago already belated paraphrases of Rochefoucault et
Cie. Lines like "No man is a match for a woman, except
with a poker and a pair of hobnailed boots; not always
even then," of old thought very nifty, and others like "Mar-
riage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my
soul, etc.," earlier considered the height of iconoclasm,
have acquired the ring of penny cynicism on the one hand
and of Greenwich Village on the other. And all such cart-
wheels, originally generative of oh's and ah's, as "We live
in an atmosphere of shame; we are ashamed of everything
that is real about us, ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives,
of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our ex-
perience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins" all
such, and they fill the play, seem as dated as the bravado of
Frank Wedekind or the moral philosophy of Henry Arthur
Jones.

It is, in summary, not what Shaw says that gives his play
what remaining measure of interest it may have; it is how

86 Man and Superman

he says It. For his uncommon drive and force in the art of
pure writing are still amply evident, and it is this quality
that, like the propulsive reserve of wheels no longer driven
by fuel, keeps the play in some motion. Platitude is mo-
mentarily refreshed by a swig of alcoholic ink, and stale-
ness inspirited with a squirt of belletristic turpentine.

Listening to the admirable phrasing of the Shavian line,
whatever its content, we are haplessly reminded how seri-
ously the ability of most of our more conspicuous contem-
porary American playwrights is disabled by the infirmity
of their literary style. With slight exception, any trace of
distinction is lacking in even the case of the relatively bet-
ter plays, and the result is a drama that, however com-
mendable it may be in other directions, has about it an
air either of spurious cultivation or of downright com-
monness.

It isn't that the playwrights do not strive for style. The
striving is often only too clammily obvious. It is that by
and large they seem to be either incompetent to achieve it
or mistake for it a prose which suggests rented white tie
and tails or a poetic expression which weds a Tin Pan Al-
ley lyricism with a hamburgered verse form. As examples
of the one and the other we may take such figures as S. N.
Behrman and Maxwell Anderson. Some years ago, Behr-
man's writing seemed to be on the point of developing a
style both graceful and witty, and in one or two instances
was even successful in realizing it. But presently what had
borne tokens of some authenticity tended more and more
toward the manufactured botanical variety and soon pro-
duced any number of such fancy little blossoms (I quote
from Dunnigan's Daughter) as "I was thinking a multi-
tude of thoughts little winds of thoughts, springing up
and dying down," and "A slim, golden column; you could
be a caryatid holding up the roof of some exquisite Greek
temple." Let alone such exalted titbits as "I sense in you
tonight a singular mixture of allure and threat"; "The con-
stant hazard rather piques me"; and "A heart-murmur, he
said. I was enchanted with the phrase. A murmur. Sounds

October 8, 1947 87

like a berceuse. Should be set to music, don't you think?
By whom? Debussy, if he were alive . - ."

Worse still, what earlier was simple, fluid and unaffected
became transmuted into such jerks and rattles as "The
function of the platitude. Very useful. As useful as the
coins in a shop. No matter how worn, they serve. If not
for platitudes, we should have to bare our hearts. Would
one care, in general conversation, for all that nudity?" Or
into such starched phraseology as "Surely, Feme you
are intelligent surely you don't believe in this universal
love-myth hypocritically promulgated by the vested reli-
gions." Or into bubble-gum like "The serpent in the gar-
den of Eden he is coiled around us. We have to throw
him off, some way. Evil is mobilized. Goodness not. Good-
ness is like you, mixed up, not resolute. Yesterday, Feme,
I saw a chance to play God; everybody likes to play God a
little bit; but that is dangerous. The other God has seized
me. The blind God . . ."

Anderson's gestures toward lyric expression, as has come
to be appreciated, have frequently led him into a style not
less phony. Though now and again he may capture a pretty
phrase, a telling line, the bulk of his later writing amounts
to little more than a cotton fancy draped in imitation tulle.
In illustration:

"Nothing but just to be a bird, and fly,
and then come down. Always the thing itself
is less than when the seed of it in thought
came to a flower within, tat swch a flower
as never grows in gardens.**

In even more touching further illustration:

"You should have asked the fish what would come of him
before the earth shrank and the land thrust up
between the oceans. You should have asked the fish
or asked me, or asked yourself, for at that time
we were the fish, you and I, or they were we
ajMl we, or they, would have known as much about it

88 Man and Superman

as I know now yet it somehow seems worth while
that the fish were not discouraged, and did keep on
at least as far as we are/'

Compare the pseudo-polished comedy style of a Behr-
man with, for example, the simple, finished product of an
English comedy writer like Maugham. A speech or two
from The Circle will do. "For some years/* remarks Cham-
pion-Cheney, "I was notoriously the prey of a secret sor-
row. But I found so many charming creatures who were
anxious to console, that in the end it grew rather fatiguing.
Out of regard to my health I ceased to frequent the draw-
ing rooms of Mayfair." Or the same character's "It's a mat-
ter of taste. I love old wine, old friends, and old books, but
I like young women. On their twenty-fifth birthday I give
them a diamond ring and tell them they must no longer
waste their youth and beauty on an old fogy like me. We
have a most affecting scene, my technique on these occa-
sions is perfect, and then I start all over again."

Or, finally, Teddie's all too familiar, "But I wasn't offer-
ing you happiness. I don't think my sort of love tends to
happiness. I'm jealous. I'm not a very easy man to get on
with. I'm often out of temper and irritable. I should be
fed to the teeth with you sometimes, and so would you be
with me. I daresay we'd fight like cat and dog, and some-
times we'd hate each other. Often you'd be wretched and
bored stiff and lonely, and often you'd be frightfully home-
sick, and then you'd regret all you'd lost. Stupid women
would be rude to you because, we'd run away together.
And some of them would cut you. I don't offer you peace
and quietness. I offer you unrest and anxiety. I don't offer
you happiness. I offer you love."

Or contrast the synthetic poetic expression of an Ander-
son, with the true singing line of an Irish playwright like
O'Casey. "Ashamed I am," proclaims O'Killigain in Pur-
ple Dusty "of the force that sent a hand to hit a girl of
grace, fit to find herself walkin* beside all the beauty that
ever shone before the eyes o' man since Helen herself un-
bound her tresses to dance her wild an' willin' way through

October S, IMt 89

the streets o* Troy." Or, to choose from half a hundred
speeches at random, AvriTs reply: "It's I that know the
truth is only in the shine o* the words you shower on me,
as ready to you as the wild flowers a love-shaken, innocent
girl would pick in a hurry outa the hedges, an' she on her
way to Mass."

In the case o playwrights who elect to abjure the chichi
rhetoric of a Behrman or the rhythmic calisthenics of an
Anderson, any chance for style goes aground on their pe-
culiar theory as to the spoken word. It is apparently their
conviction that the latter can under no circumstances bear
any resemblance to the written or so-called literary word,
and that, as a corollary, it can have verisimilitude only if it
lacks grace. The consequence is dialogue which often not
only bears small relation to human speech above the grade
of that employed by the lower order of morons but which
is ugly and painful to the critical ear.

The notion that the spoken word is dramatic only if it
departs sharply from what may be called the literary word
is responsible for night after night of such sore lingo as
the following:

a. "Don't fling that at me, Mr. Caldwell you'll get nowhere
with that. That's my wife's attack. 'I didn't take a lover.
You took a mistress/ Well, I don't consider that a virtue,
see? But to hell with that now. Get this through your heads
all of you. It's not just because my wife's going to live in
California that I'm fighting for Christopher I wouldn't
care if she was going to live on the next block. I want my
son with me all the time. I want him to live with me
to be part of my life. I want him." (Christopher Blake,
Moss Hart.)

b. "I knowl I know! Why bother to step outside and look at
life, when it's so cozy indoors and there's always a shelfful
of books handy? For God's sake, hasn't anything ever hap-
pened to you? Have you never been drunk? Or socked a
guy for making a pass at you? Or lost your panties on Fifth
Avenue?" (Dream Girl, Elmer Rice.)

c. "I once set up a travel booklet about them. I was a lino-

90 Man and Superman

typer after I had to quit college. You learn a lot of crap
setting up type. I learned about the balmy blue Pacific.
Gome to the Heavenly Isles! An orchid on every bazoom
and two bazooms on every babe. I'd like to find the gent
who wrote that booklet. I'd like to find him now and make
him come to his goddam Heavenly Isles !'* (Home Of The
Brave, Arthur Laurents.)

The apology that such language is perfectly in key with
the characters who merchant it does not entirely hold wa-
ter. It may approximate the characters' speech to a degree,
but only to a degree. It amounts merely to a fabricated ap-
proach to the exact speech. Among other things, it misses
a fully accurate ear and is simply a paraphrase, and a poor
one, of factual speech in terms o stage speech. It is, in
short, no truer and infinitely less effective than so-called
literary speech.

Compare in this connection, whether for verisimilitude
or dramatic effect it need not, obviously, be added for
beauty such otomyces with dialogue like Carroll's for
his Canon Skerritt:

"And since when has the Sacred Heart of our 'Redeemer,
that kings and emperors and queens like Violante and
Don John of Austria and the great Charles V and the sol-
dier Ignatius walked barefooted for the love of since
when has it become a sort of snap door chamber where
dolts and boobs come to to kick ball and find them-
selves tripped up on an altar step instead o a goal post?"

Or like Shaw's for his Candida:

"Ask James* mother and his three sisters what it cost to
save James the trouble of doing anything but be strong
and dever and happy. Ask me what it costs to be James*
mother and three sisters and wife and mother to his chil-
dren all in one. Ask Prossy and Maria how troublesome
the house is even when we have no visitors to help us slice
the onions. Ask the tradesmen who want to worry James
and spoil his beautiful sermons who it is that puts them
off. When there is money to give, he gives it; when there

October 8, 1947 91

is money to refuse, I refuse It. I build a castle of comfort
and indulgence and love for him, and stand sentinel al-
ways to keep little vulgar cares out. I make him master
here, though he does not know it, and could not tell you
a moment ago how it came to be so . . ."

Or like Synge's for his Conchubor:

"There's one sorrow has no end surely that's being
old and lonesome. But you and I will have a little peace
in Emain, with harps playing, and old men telling stories
at the fall of night. I've let build rooms for our two selves,
Deirdre, with red gold upon the walls and ceilings that
are set with bronze. There was never a queen in the east
had a house the like of your house, that's waiting for
yourself in Emain."

Dramatic art in America for the greater part has become
simply a playwriting business, and its practitioners are
largely racketeers with a dramatic sales talk, devoid of any-
thing remotely resembling literary taste, literary ability,
and literary education. Most of them read and act like
pulp writers crossed with telegraph key-men. Their style,
so to speak, follows set tracks and is readily recognizable.
It consists in the wholesale use of dashes, as in such dia-
logue as "Oh, God if they don't come back if they
don't come back ." It hopes to conceal the obvi-
ousness of its content in such apologies as "What I've said
I know it's old hat and that you've heard it many times
before ," etc. It relies upon crew-cut dialogue with its
monosyllabic replies as a substitute for both suspense and
humor, as, for example:

"Answer yes or no. You live downstairs, I take it?

"No.

"Oh, you don't live downstairs?

"Yes.

"Say, what the hell? Do you or don't you?

"Yes.

"Yes, what?

92 Man and Superman

"Yes, no.

"Wait, Sergeant. I think I understand her. You mean,
yes, you do not live downstairs?
"Yes."

It further cuckoos its own style endlessly: "Everyone's a
murderer at heart. The person who has never felt a pas-
sionate hankering to kill someone is without emotion, and
do you think it's law or religion that stays the average per-
son from homicide? No it's lack of courage the fear
of being caught, or cursed with remorse. Our murderer is
merely a rational animal with the courage of his convic-
tions." Profanity and obscenity are regularly resorted to
for a strength of expression that otherwise seems to be be-
yond the playwrights' competences, and "Jesus!/' "Christ!,"
"God damned," "bastard," and "son-of-a-bitch" are scat-
tered through dialogue like toadstools. "Yeah?" is the mark
of vulgar character; "Indeed?" of polite. "Wonderful" is
the adjective common to most emotions, whether love or a
relish of kidney stew. And the habitual "I mean " is the
refuge less of character than of playwright inarticulateness.

Passion is writ by rote: "But I need you. You know that!
And you need me. It's too late. We are helpless now in
the clutch of forces more potent than our little selves
forces that brought us into the world forces that have
made the worldl Whether you will it or not, this binding
power is sweeping you and me together. And you must
yield!" The Pulitzer prize is given for authentic Yankee
speech to playwrights who confect such lines as "Let a man
get miserable and he is miserable; a woman ain't really
happy no other way," and as "It 'us then that the scales
dropped from my eyes! An' I seen the truth! An' when I
did, everything in the whole world 'us changed fer me! I
loved everybody an' everything! An' I 'us so happy I felt
jist like I 'us afloatin* away on a ocean o' joy!"

The "punch" style, miscellaneously indulged in, also has
its pattern: "The whole damn government's a gang of liver
flukes sucking the blood out of the body politic and
there you sit, an honest liver fluke, arranging the graft for

October 8, 1947 93

everybody else and refusing to do any blood sucking on
your own account! God, it makes me sick!" Cousin to the
punch style is the heroic-romantic style: "The important
man, George, is the man who knows how to live! I love
Hocky, I think an awful lot of him. But, he's like my fa-
ther. They have no outside interests at all. They're flat
they're colorless. They're not men they're caricatures!
Oh, don't become like them, George! Don't be an impor-
tant man and crack up at forty-five. I want our lives to-
gether to be full and rich and beautiful! I want it so
much!" And cousin to the heroic-romantic is also the he-
roic-scientific: "There is not a man in medicine who has
not said what you have said and meant it for a minute
all of us, Dr. Nussbaum. And you are right, my friend. We
are groping. We are guessing. But, at least our guesses to-
day are closer to the truth than they were twenty years ago.
And twenty years from now they will be still closer. That
is what we are here for. Ah, there is so much to be done
and so little time in which to do it that one life is never
long enough . . . It's not easy for any of us. But in the
end our reward is something richer than simply living . . .
(Sighs) Gome, Dr. Nussbaum, a little game of chess,
maybe, or (winks) a glass of schnaps?'*

The melodramatic style generally fits into a mold some-
thing like "For the love of God, listen to me! While you
sit here quietly eating and drinking, tonight, enemy planes
dropped seventy thousand kilos of bombs on Paris. God
knows how many they killed! God knows how much of life
and beauty is forever destroyed! And you sit here drinking
and laughing! Are you worms? Are you lice? Get out of
your soft chairs and off your soft tails and do something,
do something! If you don't, you bastards, as God is my
judge I'll bust the jaw of every God damned one of you!"
And the "cultured" style, when not in self-protection
crossed with a touch of banter, one something like this:
"There is in your psychological composition, my dear, a
touch of the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, of the livid gaunt-
ness of El Greco, 6f the stark realism of Goya, of the spring-
time freshness of Botticelli. You are, my dear, in other

94 Man and Superman

words, an orchestration of that occasional color monotone
in Brahms and that flowery ornamentation in Rossini."

The style is not only the man; the style is the play.

And the style is this Man And Superman. Give your ear,
for example, to this: "Oh, they know it in their hearts,
though they think themselves bound to blame you by their
silly superstitions about morality and propriety and so
forth. But I know, and the whole world really knows,
though it does not say so, that you were right to follow
your instinct; that vitality and bravery are the greatest
qualities a woman can have, and motherhood her solemn
initiation into womanhood; and that the fact of your not
being legally married matters not one scrap either to your
own worth or to our real regard for you."

Or to this: "I solemnly say that I am not a happy man.
Ann looks happy; but she is only triumphant, successful,
victorious. That is not happiness, but the price for which
the strong sell their happiness. What we have both done
this afternoon is to renounce happiness, renounce free-
dom, renounce tranquillity, above all, renounce the ro-
mantic possibilities of an unknown future, for the cares of
a household and a family. I beg that no man may seize the
occasion to get half drunk and utter imbecile speeches and
coarse pleasantries at my expense."

Mr. Evans and most of his company serve the beauti-
fully written play fairly well. It is, however, his evident be-
lief in its persistent philosophical modernity that brings
forth the critical reflection, O temporal O Mauricel

95

HIGH BUTTON SHOES. OCTOBER 9, 1947

A musical comedy with book by Stephen Longstreet, mu-
sic by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Produced by
Monte Proser and Joseph Kipness for the rest of the sea-
son's performances in, initially, the Century Theatre.

PROGRAM

HARRISON FLOY PhU Silvers

MR. PONTDUE Joey Faye

UNCLE WILLIE Paul Godkin

HENRY LONGSTREET

Jack McCauley

GEN'L LONGSTREET Clay Clement
STEVIE LONGSTREET

Johnny Stewart

FRAN Lois Lee

SARA LONGSTREET Nanette Fabray
NANCY Helen Gallagher

HUBERT OGGLETHORPE

Mark Dawson

SHIRLEY SIMPKINS Carole Coleman
ELMER SIMPKINS Nathaniel Fret/
ELMER SIMPKINS, JR.

Donald Harris

COACH Tom Glennon

MR, ANDERSON William David

A BOY AT THE PICNIC

Arthur Partington

His PLAYMATE Sonora Lee

A POPULAR GIRL Jacqueline Dodge
A BETTING MAN George Spelvin
ANOTHER BETITNG MAN

Howard Lenters

SYNOPSIS; Act I. Scene 1. Kokomo and points east. Scene 2. Liv-
ing-room of the Longstreet home,, New Brunswick, N. J. Early autumn,
1913. Scene 3. Redmond Street. Scene 4. Near the stadium. Scene 5. The
Longstreet living-room. Scene 6. Road to the picnic. Scene 7. "Long-
streetvttte" Act II. Scene 1. Atlantic City the bathhouses. Scene 4. Red-
mond Street, New Brunswick. Scene 5. The Longstreet living-room.
Scene 6. The road. Scene 7. The stadium. Scene 8. The Longstreet garden.

Director: George Abbott.

AN THE last five seasons, twenty-seven of the musical exhib-
its, including revivals, have dealt with past and hypotheti-
cally nostalgic years. This is the twenty-eighth. Since an old
saying has it that there is something good to be found in
even the worst of things if only one will look hard enough
for it as, doubtless for example, in bird's-nest soup and
athlete's foot we obediently look for what is good in this
otherwise inferior show. Looking, we find an original and
very amusing ballet travesty of the old Mack Sennett Key-
stone pictures by the talented Jerome Robbins; a funny

96 High Button Shoes

act out o burlesque by Phil Silvers and Joey Faye which
follows the homosexual comedy pattern of that bygone art
and which has been severely criticized as highly objection-
able by members of the audience who have burst then-
sides laughing at it; the presence of the attractive Nanette
Fabray in the leading feminine role; and agreeable per-
formances by Jack McCauley, Lois Lee and Helen Gal-
lagher, the last named in a comical tango number. An-
other item on the credit side is the haphazard nature of
the show, at least in my book. What with so many of our
contemporary musicals straining for so-called integration
and in the process losing that quality of abandon so wel-
come in the species of entertainment, it is pleasant to get
one for a change, let its languors be however manifold,
that does not give a hoot for strict, logical form and just
throws itself carelessly around.

The aforesaid integrating business, which has lately
spread over our musical stage in alarming proportions, is
despite the seeming current conviction approximately as
new as a Grover Cleveland button. If such shows as Briga-
doon, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Allegro, etc., are integrated,
as their press-agents proudly assert, in the departments of
music, dancing, pantomime and the spoken word, equally
integrated was the Music In The Air of fifteen years ago,
not to mention The Merry Widow of forty, the Robin
Hood of more than fifty, the Billee Taylor of more than
sixty, and various such long-ago others as Madeleine, or
The Magic Kiss, Dorothy, The Chimes Of Normandy, et al.

All this, however, is just by the way. The immediate
point is that, while the integrating business is quite all
right critically, I am a bit worried over its future. It be-
gins to look as if it may go too far and as if the time will
come when the integrating may become so excessive that
our musicals will be as inscrutable to the average customer
and as difficult for him to decipher as Pirandello. The
time may come, indeed, when the integration may be car-
ried to such an extreme that a Broadway audience will be
so confused it will not know when the ballet lets off and
when the heroine jilts the archduke for the cowboy. And

October 9, 1947 97

when that day comes Michael Todd can make a million
dollars reviving Star and Garter.

From this distance, I confess that I am scared. My trepi-
dation may turn out to be baseless, but in my frightened
mind's eye I can see the shows so integrated that my re-
views will probably get Agnes de Mille mixed up with
Boris O'Rourke, the comedian, and both confused with
the locket which the tenor gives the soprano and which is
stolen by Richard Rodgers, the baritone, plotting in ca-
hoots with Agnes de Mille's two pretty serving maids, Os-
car Hammerstein and Jo Mielziner.

I may at times be a little tired of the unintegrated shows
in which the ballet dancers suddenly enter the hero's fa-
ther's steel factory and interrupt a meeting of the board of
directors by performing Gaite Parisienne. I may also at
times be rather sick of the coloratura who promptly bursts
into song about the beauty- of love under the Venetian
stars upon observing that Porfirio Katz, the inn-keeper, has
ripped his breeches in the rear. And I may no longer be
delighted beyond all bounds when a team of acrobats, cos-
tumed as the heroine's butler and footmen, come on and
do their act in her boudoir. I may, in short, be ready to
call it a day for all such shows which apparently have been
written and staged by a vaudeville agent in collaboration
with a discharged carpenter. But I am not so sure that I
will not soon also be ready to call it a day for these others
which substitute an equivalent of the exact dramaturgical
technique of a Pinero for the old nonsensical abandon of
Pixley and Luders, Henry Blossom and Alfred Robyn, and
Harry B. Smith and Ludwig Englander. The danger is that
the musical stage may come to the point where, except for
the incorporated tunes and dancing, it will too closely re-
semble the dramatic stage. The straws are increasingly in
the wind. The current tendency toward rigidity in form
may convert what should properly be a carefree gypsy art
into more or less sedate bastard drama.

It seems, in brief, that as the technique of the drama
grows freer, that of the musical shows becomes more con-
fined and restricted, and that the shows are taking over the

98 High Button Shoes

old, outmoded dramatic technique. The change is for the
worse, and in two ways. In the first place, the shows make
too much sense. And, in the second place, no one any
longer feels like taking them out to supper, much less for
a hansom ride around the Park afterwards. They are pretty
and attractive, but they are a little too intelligent and too
formal.

George Lederer, who in the pre-Ziegf eld period produced
some of the happiest shows our theatre has known, had a
recipe which he resolutely adhered to, and with large suc-
cess. ''Let a show start out with some sense," he once ex-
plained to me, "and then let it gradually lose it." Any show
that persisted in being logical to the end, he felt, did not
belong on the musical stage but on the dramatic. And
somehow I think he had a lot there. These strictly inte-
grated and logical shows may be to the taste of such critics
as approach the musical form of entertainment with the
same solemnity they approach the dramatic, but they are
sometimes a little disturbing to those wiser ones who look
upon it as a potential gay holiday from lofty and sacro-
sanct standards. It is these possibly more acceptable fellows
who, like Thomas Hardy and Max Beerbohm, like Archer
and Walkley, and like Huneker and Chief Justice Holmes,
rescind their intellectual quotient when the occasion is
one of song and dance and pretty girls and deck out their
critical heads with cap and bells. What they want is not
artistic symmetry but wild folly, not reason but cajoling
imbecility. Since even the most perfectly integrated and in-
telligent show is perceived to be pretty ridiculous when
closely analyzed, why not put the horse before the cart in
the first place?

What we ask for, in a word,, is not a return to the shows
of merry village maidens, the princess disguised as a lieu-
tenant of Black Huzzars, and the comedian who comes on
with a beer spigot attached to his seat. What we ask for, in
another word, is not the old, silly, romantic hokum inter-
rupted by dialect comedians with chin whiskers and pil-
lows stuffed into their pantaloons. What we ask for is just
some of the old natural and easy and wonderfully enter-

October 9, 1947 99

talnlng absurdity, some of the old happy-go-lucky inconse-
quence, and less of the studiously ordered and determined
diversion which we are doubtless due to be in for. That we
will not get it is more or less certain. That what we will get
will probably in some cases be critically worthy is equally
certain. But I have a feeling that however critically worthy
it may be, it won't be much real fun.

But if this High Button Shoes enjoys such virtues, its
over-all lapses tend to make one largely oblivious of them.
The book is a vaudeville's-eye view of its author's family
in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1913, and has all the lit-
erary merit of the old Keith-Albee skit in which the bag-
gage-man who came in to remove the trunks was mistaken
for an English lord, and all the humorous merit of the one
in which the piano-mover was mistaken by the young soci-
ety girl for her millionaire fiance who had been absent for
a year in Asbury Park. The music is the kind that the wait-
ers in the night clubs hum on their way to the service
kitchen, and the wit consists in alluding to Henry Ford as
Hank, in such repartee as "How's crops?** "I haven't shot
crops for a long time/* and in remarks about selling
swampy real estate by the gallon. The lyrics narrate that,
while love may be desirable, it is security that a girl should
keep her eyes on, and that getting away for a day in the
country is wonderful. At the conclusion of the song num-
bers the principal singers throw their arms wide open and
the chorus raises its in turn in military salute. Tap dances
and dances in which the boys lift the girls into the air also
are not missing. And the d&xxr and costumes, by Oliver
Smith and Miles White respectively, both often commend-
able fellows, are on the visibly economical and unattrac-
tive side.

100

ALLEGRO. OCTOBER 10, 1947

A musical play by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammer-
stein II. Produced by the Theatre Guild for the rest of the
season's performances in the Majestic Theatre.

PROGRAM

MARJORIE TAYLOR

GREEK PROFESSOR Raymond Keast

Annamary Dickey

BIOLOGY PROFESSOR Robert Bryn

DR. JOSEPH TAYLOR William Ching

PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR

MAYOR Edward Plait

Blake Ritter

GRANDMA TAYLOR

SHAKESPEARE STUDENT

Muriel O* Motley

Susan Svetlik

_, T f Ray Harrison
F>S OF JOEY [ FfatlkWestbrook

BERTRAM WOOLHAVEN
Ray Harrison

JENNIE BRINKER Roberta Jonay

MOLLY Katrina Van Os

PRINCIPAL Robert Bryn

BEULAH Gloria Wills

MABEL Evelyn Taylor

MINISTER Edward Platt

BICYCLE BOY Stanley Simmons

MILLIE Julie Humphries

GEORGIE Harrison Mutter

DOT Sylvia Karlton

HAZEL Kathryn Lee

ADDIE Patricia Bybett

CHARLIE TOTVNSEND John Conte

DR. BIGBY DENBY

JOSEPH TAYLOR, JR. John Battles

Lawrence Fletcher

Miss LIPSCOMB Susan Svetlik

MRS. MtrLHOusE Frances Rainer

^_ T f Charles Tate

CJHKER I./EADERS< .

\ Sam Steen

MRS. LANSDALE Lily Paget
JARMAN , BUI Bradley

COACH Wilson Smith

MAID Jean Houloose

NED BRTNTKER Paul Parks

EMELY Lisa Kirk

ENGLISH PROFESSOR David CoUyer

BROOK LANSDALE Stephen Chase

CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR

BUCKLEY Wilson Smith

William UcCutty

SYNOPSIS: The story starts in 1905 on the day Joseph Taylor, Jr.,
is born and follows his life to his thirty-fifth year. The three major loco-
tions of action are: Act I. His home town and his college town. Act II. A
large city.

Director: Agnes de Mitte.

A

REVIEW of a musical show is entertaining in the de-
gree that the show itself is not. Little is more difficult than
getting the flavor and spirit of a really good show onto pa-
per. But with a bad one the job is easy. You can amuse the

October 10, 1947 101

reader with such critical monkeyshines as professing to ad-
mire its great wit and recording as prime examples some of
its deadlier jokes, or arguing with a straight face the aes-
thetic superiority of its batty p'ot to that of Ariadne Auf
Naxos. You can describe its lifted synthetic tunes in terms
of the criminal statutes covering kidnapping and bigamy,
and parallel its lyrics about the stars, the moon and thou
with verses composed by the latest child prodigy unearthed
in Jackson Heights or Brooklyn. You can, in short, cut up
and, if you happen to be in any sort of form that day, give
the more blase of your customers a reasonably diverting
time, especially since many of them eccentrically view the
stage as a bull-ring and the critic as a matador, and are un-
derstandably disappointed if the bull isn't knocked off: and
its ears and tail tossed to them. The trouble in this case
is that the show under review, though a pronounced let-
down from its authors 1 previous works, is not in its entirety
quite dreadful enough to warrant such bloodthirsty treat-
ment and that as a consequence the remarks on it may not
be of the slaughterous nature seemingly so enchanting to
the jaded and bloodthirsty reader.

While the show produced the night before, whatever
else may be said against it, has a conciliatory unpreten-
tiousness, this Allegro is as pretentious as artificial jewelry,
and just about as valuable. In the case of their previous big
successes, Oklahoma! and Carousel, the Messrs. Rodgers
and Hammerstein leaned on plays by Lynn Riggs and
Ferenc Molndr for their inspiration. Here, they have gone
it on their own, or at least on Hammerstein's own, and
with scarcely salubrious results. What their book amounts
to is a pompous combination of the poorer elements of
Andreyev's The Life Of Man, which form the earlier parts
of their exhibit, and of Wilder's Our Town, which in para-
phrase form the later, and with an old D. W. Griffith go-
ing-forth-to-meet-the-dawn ending tacked on for extra de-
pressing measure. Mixed with the vermicelli, furthermore,
is not onl/such hokum mush as the time-honored wedding
scene and the ghost of a mother who returns at intervals
to counsel her son from error, but a cocktail party chatter-

102 Allegro

box number paraphrased from an old Noel Coward show,
a college boy number dittoed from an earlier George Ab-
bott one, and various other elements hardly rivalling the
daisy in freshness. In an effort to lend the sentimental old
stuff an appearance of freshness nonetheless and to camou-
flage the general lack of imagination there is recourse to
enough stage machinery to equip Drury Lane for a decade:
sliding platforms, hydraulic curtains, loud speakers, flights
of steps, Royal Navy regatta lighting, lantern slides, and al-
most everything else but a buzz-saw and a Ben Hur tread-
milL What undoubtedly started out in the authors' minds
as a simple story simply told and simply sung has accord-
ingly taken on a sufficient physical rowdydow to serve
Strindberg's Dream Play as it might have been staged by
Piscator in his Berlin heyday.

The alleviating interludes are few. Agnes de Mille has
provided some fair choreography, though I for one might
wish that she would call quits on the mesozoic business of
female dancers derricked into the ether by their male com-
panions and on having pairs of dancers intermittently fly
madly across the stage and kick their right legs backwards
just as they reach the wings. There are several passable
songs by Rodgers, though none up to his former standard
and though the ordinarily ingenious Hammerstein has
tumbled lyrically into such themes as "Money Isn't Every-
thing," "What A Lovely Day For The Wedding," and a
variant of "The Lady Is A Tramp" called "The Gentle-
man Is A Dope." And, to continue the brief catalogue of
purely relative merit, there are attractive performances by
Roberta Jonay as the wife who deserts the hero bent on a
medical career, John Conte as his cynical friend, and Lisa
Kirk as the steadfast nurse with whom at the finish he
walks soulfully toward the movie sunrise. There is, too, Jo
Mielziner's initiatedly contrived setting to substitute for
the authors' absent fancy. But, though the show has been
acclaimed by some of my colleagues as a rare masterpiece
and as marking a tremendous advance of the* American
musical stage, I otherwise can not see it. All that I can see
is an attempt to break away from the more conventional

October 10, 1947 103

pattern and achieve a show of affecting simplicity which
has wound up so complexly conventional and so complexly
simple that it turns turtle. A lot of time and money have
gone into the undertaking. A little more time and less
money might have improved things. The impression of the
whole as it stands Is of a little yokel girl in a cheap calico
dress and with a rhinestone tiara on her head optimistically
riding a rocking-horse in a race with Whirlaway.

The show, which begins in 1905 with the birth of its
protagonist and follows his career to his thirty-fifth year, is
the twenty-ninth in a five year span which has set itself to
evoke sentiment out of the past. The sentiment which is
evoked in this instance is closely identified with that of an
inebriated adult melting at the sight of a kiddie-car in a
toy shop window. Its well-spring is in the projected theo-
ries that the city is ruinous to a serious career and that
only in the small town may a man develop his resources,
that people in a metropolis are dipsomaniacs and neurotics
whereas those in the hinterland communities are possessed
of all the healthy virtues, and that true love is doomed in
an environment where the buildings are more than three
stories high and can flourish only in one whose lavatory fa-
cilities are idyllically situated in a back-yard. The show is
also another of the integrated species. All its elements,
save one, have been integrated with painstaking care. That
one is entertainment.

104

MEDEA. OCTOBER 20, 1947

A free adaptation of the Euripides tragedy by Robinson
Jeffers. Produced by Robert Whitehead and Oliver Rea
for the rest of the season's performances in 3 initially > the
National Theatre.

PROGRAM

THE NURSE
THE TUTOR

THE CHILDREN

Florence Reed
Don McHenry
Bobby Nick
Peter Moss
FIRST WOMAN OF CORINTH

Grace Mitts
SECOND WOMAN OF CORINTH

Kathryn Grill
THIRD WOMAN OF CORINTH

Leone Wilson
MEDEA Judith Anderson

The entire action of the play occurs before Medea's house in
Corinth.

Director: John Gtelgud.

CREON Albert Hecht

JASON John Gielgud

AEGEUS Hugh Franklin

JASON'S SLAVE Richard Hylton

ATTENDANTS TO ( Martha Dowries
MEDEA \ Marian Seldes

Ben Morse
Jon Dawson
Richard Boone
Dennis McCarthy

SOLDIERS

A

THEATRE PUBLIC that esteems something like an All
My Sons for the power of its tragic purge must plainly be
a bit abashed in the presence of anything like the Medea.
A catharsis satisfactorily obtained from rhubarb surely
finds dynamite a little superfluous and discommoding. It is
for this reason that a producer who hopes to keep any such
Greek tragedy going beyond the next Saturday night nec-
essarily has either to coat it with appetizing marquee names
or bring it into some modern acceptance with an adapta-
tion of one kind or another. Anyone who imagines the con-
trary must believe that the JEschylus trilogy from which
O'Neill derived Mourning Becomes Electro, would have
matched the long run of the latter,^ or that the two day en-
gagement of Euripides' The Trojan Women some seasons
ago might not have been extended for at least a few days

October 20, 1947 105

more if the cast had included Helen Hayes, Gertrude Law-
ence, the Lunts, and Joe Louis, in whiteface.

It is thus that the Messrs. Whitehead and Rea have
wisely seen to it that the Euripides drama has been filtered
through the fluent modern verse of Robinson Jeffers and
brought into the appreciation and convenience of the con-
temporary theatre through such devices as giving the origi-
nal Messenger's speech detailing the horror of Jason's
bride's cremation to the Nurse character with whom the
audience has been acquainted throughout the play, an in-
tegration of the disturbing chorus into the body of the
drama, a more congenial imagery in the general treatment,
and, among other things, an ending in which the impossi-
bly spectacular dragon-drawn chariot with the dead chil-
dren is supplanted by Medea's more practical barricade of
her house against Jason and the baring of his sons* corpses
within the doorway and within range of his grimly pun-
ished vision. The producers have astutely further seen to it
that the acting company includes such names as Judith An-
derson, John Gielgud, and Florence Reed, and that the
costumes and scenery will please an audience with the
thought that they cost a lot of money.

But should anyone regard this preamble as a reflection
on the presentation,, let him promptly be disabused. Jef-
fers' free, de-goded rendering of the great tragedy is a more
than acceptable performance much superior theatrically
to the Gilbert Murray translation; and the delineation of
its leading role by Judith Anderson in all save the last mo-
ments suffices it handsomely. It is an occasion to be recom-
mended to that share of our audiences whose theatrical
stimulation is somehow not entirely accomplished by mu-
sical show sliding platforms, the startling philosophy that
women frequently pursue men, and celebrated literature
that is made into plays by deleting its literary quality. It is
only, as noted, in the later portion of the drama that Miss
Anderson, like an otherwise Ail-American fullback who
has exhausted his resources in the three earlier periods of
the game, misses. Up to that point, she is excellent. But
thereafter her power seems partly to wane and her vocal

106 Medea

projection partly to weaken, and the mounting climax of
the play consequently fails to explode. Gielgud's Jason is
Ivor Novello in whiskers and gives the effect of a tenor
Siegfried cast as a bass Hagen. Florence Reed's Nurse, ex-
cept for the articulation of "them" as "thum" and a too
unrelieved Bela Lugosi facial expression, is satisfactory.
And the rest serve.

While commending anew the fluid grace of Jeffers' treat-
ment, it may incidentally be observed that the drama
vouchsafes him luxuriant opportunity to indulge himself
in the grisly, for which he has ever indicated a quenchless
fancy. I submit a few gory samples:

"They would indeed be happy to lay their hands on my
head: holding the very knives and the cleavers that carved
their sire."

"If I could tear off the flesh and be bones; naked bones;
salt-scoured bones . . ."

"The unburied horror, the unbridled hatred, the vultures
tearing a corpse."

"If I should go into the house with a sharp knife to the
man and his bride, or if I could fire the room they sleep
in, and hear them wake in the white of the fire, and
cry to each other, and howl like dogs, and howl and
die . . ."

"A young mare broke from the chariot and tore with her
teeth a stallion/'

"I'd have your bony loins beaten to a blood-froth/'

"White-hot, flaying the flesh from the living bones; blood
mixed with fire ran down, she fell, she burned on the
floor writhing."

'The fire stuck to the flesh, it glued him to her; he tried
to stand up, he tore her body and his own; the burnt
flesh broke in lumps from the bones . . . They lie
there, eyeless, disfaced, untouchable; middens of smok-
ing flesh . . ."

"The harsh tides of breath still whistled in the black
mouths."

"If he were my own hands I would ait him off, or my

October 20, 1947 107

eyes, I would gouge him out ... I want him crushed,
boneless, crawling . . ."

Coming again to the quality of Miss Anderson's per-
formance, we may also reflect that one of the supplemen-
tary functions of the theatre is the providing of its patrons
with the opportunity to become wroth with one another
over their personal estimates of its actresses. The oppor-
tunity is no new dispensation; it has been a boon for
years. Nor has it been taken full advantage of by the laity
only; the critics, those theoretical cocks of jurisprudence,
have no less exercised their gala rights and privileges, Long
before the arguments over Bernhardt and Duse shattered
the rafters, no actress, however eminent in her craft, was
spared her share of artistic disparagement, which on occa-
sion approached the obscene. And the battles, which often
have edged toward fisticuffs, continue unabated to this day
and hour.

They are understandable. For not only, apparently, in
any appraisal of an actress must the appraiser's insuppress-
ible personal prejudice for or against her visually and cor-
poreally be taken into the referee's consideration, but the
appraisal itself is founded upon the inexactness of just
what it is that constitutes or does not constitute histrionic
virtuosity. Many people, of course, can recognize abso-
lutely bad acting when they see it. But it is doubtful
whether they are quite so proficient in assaying the middle
ground, and more doubtful still whether they can recog-
nize the real thing for what it is. It isn't that they may not
feel that the performance is a good one; it is simply that
they do not know, and could not for the life of them ex-
plain, why it is.

Margaret Anglin, for example, is in the opinion of
many one of the most expert actresses that the modern
American stage has offered. Yet, because many, many more
have not taken to her stage-wise in propria persona, not
only has she been a less than popularly endorsed one but
has not been drafted for a play in some years. Maude Ad-
ams, on the other hand, was in the opinion of just as many

108 Medea

an actress of very considerably less stature. Yet, because
many, many more were pleased with her as a stage figure,
she reigned in the popular favor until her voluntary re-
tirement. Today, in further example and confusion, the
popular esteem in which Katharine Cornell is held materi-
ally outmeasures that which is the portion of this Judith
Anderson, though it would be hard to believe that the lat-
ter is not the superior in every departm'ent of the craft save
alone looks and personal magnetism. I shall not be so
unchivalrous as to mention names in another and more
severe direction, but at least one current actress whose
knowledge of the calling is wholly superficial is neverthe-
less pretty generally accepted as the genuine article by lay-
men and many professional critics, while one who could
give her cards and spades, and even a pair of aces on sleeve
elastics, is amiably but nonetheless firmly dismissed. The
former simply happens to be blessed with a striking per-
sonality, whereas the latter was neglected in that attribute
by the good fairies at cradle-time.

It is that way often. The only actress on the present
American stage whose proficiency has not suffered critically
from any such external physical considerations is Helen
Hayes. But there are others who have found themselves
victims and whose measure of talent has in turn found it-
self up against the hurdle.

Several seasons ago, a young novice, Barbara Bel Geddes,
was acclaimed as a surprisingly adept actress for her per-
formance in Deep Are The Roots. Her performance was an
appealing and charming one and, further, her personality
fitted the part and her pretty looks enhanced it. That much
freely granted. But of acting, except in the most elemen-
tary and obvious sense, there was little. And so with all but
two of the various lauded girls who have played the role of
Sally Middleton in the popular comedy success, The Voice
Of The Turtle.

There is the matter, too, of direction. That many an ac-
tress has received credit which properly belongs to a skilful
director is an old story. And that many an unskilful direc-
tor has not received blame for an actress' poor performance

October 20, 1947 109

is an equally old one. But there are very few people, and
that includes a fair number of the professional critics, who
are able to discern where the director begins and the ac-
tress lets off, or vice versa. There have been and there are
actresses who on rare occasions have managed first-rate per-
formances in spite of their directors. But there are very
many more whose abilities at times have been hamstrung,
distorted and botched by them.

The late Henry Miller, one of the best directors of act-
ing our theatre has known, was able to make an only pass-
able actress seem for the time being to be one of high com-
petence, and to make a really good one seem even superior
to herself. And the same held true of David Belasco, em-
piric in other dramatic departments though he may have
been. In the case of both, it sometimes happened that when
an actress left the fold and came under other direction her
audiences could not understand why one previously ven-
erated by them as something of a histrionic genius had so
suddenly deteriorated and gone to pot.

There is probably no actress on our stage at the present
time who knows more about the technical aspects of acting
than the German-born Elisabeth Bergner. But most of her
performances are bad for the reason that her husband,
Paul Czinner, who has long directed her, permits her so to
overlay and lacquer her essential competences with per-
sonal tricks and mannerisms that the abilities are buried
and made mock of. There is, in turn, an actress contempo-
rary with Miss Bergner who obviously knows little more
about her craft than a moderately talented amateur. Yet
shrewd direction now and again has been successful in
palming her off on audiences, along with many of the crit-
ics, as an actress of some authentic position. In this, she is
helped of course by a considerable physical attractiveness
and a flair for comporting herself with an interesting dash.

A canny director sometimes succeeds in covering up an
actress' deficiencies and embellishing her better qualities
through one chicane or another. If her walk is on the un-
graceful side, he sees to it that she either does considerable
sitting or moves behind obscuring chairs, sofas, pianos, and

110 Medea

what not. If she is graceful, as Gertrude Lawrence is, he
takes every advantage of a script to work in as much move-
ment for her as he can, short of converting the occasion
into a semblance of Les Sylphides. An actress who may be
awkward in gesture is protected by a constant interruption
of gesture on the part of her acting vis-a-vis. One who is ex-
pert in it is allowed to go to it with a cast directed as if it
were afflicted with paralysis of the arms. There is no actress
so poor that she can not be made to appear better by direct-
ing the others on the stage to seem as poor as she herself
factually is. There is hardly one so good, on the other
hand, that she may not be made to appear less so by direct-
ing another in her most important scene either quietly to
underplay her or convincingly to pretend to a winning hu-
mility in the presence of the august one.

Duse became at least in a measure the figure she was be-
cause D'Annunzio, during his reign over her, not merely
wrote roles exactly fitted to her but, more importantly,
saw to it that the woman as woman was never too much
superseded by the woman as actress. Rejane triumphed
when she slapped any director who sought to elevate
greasepaint over inner composition and spirit. "I am for
nature and against naturalism/' said Coquelin. He also
said what is in large part the sharpest commentary ever
written on acting, "The two beings which co-exist in the
actress are inseparable, but it is the one who sees who must
be the master. It is the soul, the other is the body. It is the
reason, and its double is to the other as rhyme is to reason:
a slave who must obey. The more it is the master, the more
the actress is an artist/'

The nature of a role is frequently another item in the
confusion of appraisal. A wrong role, as should be suffi-
ciently known but frequently is not, may give to what is
critically very good acting the effect, in the minds of many,
of very poor. Helen Hayes' performance in Mr. Gilhooley
in a role quite unsuited to her, for example, was at bot-
tom as expert as many of her other performances, but sim-
ply because her personality was at variance with the role
most of her audiences charged the jpoor effect to her act-

October 20, 1947 111

Ing. Ina Claire was every bit as proficient in an ill-suited
dramatic role in Children Of Darkness as she has been in
comedy roles, but the objection to her by tryout audiences
was such that she saw the way the critical wind would blow
if she appeared in it in New York and abandoned the part.

The late Charles Frohman was sagacious enough not
to allow his stars, with rare exception, to take any such
chances with a chuckleheaded public and its critical
guides. He accordingly almost always saw to it that they
played much the same role, whatever the play and what-
ever the role may have been called. One of the few chances
he ever took was with Ethel Barrymore in Galsworthy's
The Silver Box and, though she was first-rate in it, her au-
diences still admired her talents more greatly in her pre-
vious pretty little nothings. He said that he should have
learned his lesson in the case of Maude Adams in The
Pretty Sister Of Jose. The relative virtue of her perform-
ance was lost sight of because of the strangeness of the role,
and she was charged by the opaque, both lay and profes-
sional, with shortcomings which mostly and actually were
non-existent.

A more recent illustration. Three seasons ago, the late
Laurette Taylor's portrayal of the mother role in The
Glass Menagerie was hailed, and deservedly, as one of the
finest examples of the acting art that our contemporary
stage had seen. But I wonder how many of her eulogists
knew why it was what it was, that is, aside from its readily
to be discerned and appreciated aspects. Did they know,
for instance, that she on this occasion profited herself by
rejecting Coquelin's dictum, "The first duty of a player is
respect for his text; whatever he says must be said as the
author wrote it"? Far from doing any such thing, she threw
a lot of the Tennessee Williams text to the winds and
adapted and rephrased it, very ingeniously, to her own per-
sonal acting ends. Did they further know that her perform-
ance varied markedly from night to night, that it was never
the same, and that die skilfully maneuvered it to the dif-
ferent reactions of successive audiences?

Did they appreciate her dexterity in timing her laughs so

112 Medea

that they would not suffer from what coughing there might
be in the audience? Did they know that what seemed "nat-
ural" in her performance was frequently the result of au-
dacious ad libbing? Did they understand that seldom was
her articulation and modulation of a line of dialogue the
same, and that in this regard she followed her instinct as to
a particular audience's character and receptivity? Did they
comprehend, in short, that what they regarded, and cor-
rectly, to be the top acting performance of its year was not
one performance but successively all of a dozen or more,
that its entrepreneur had directed herself in it without out-
side aid, that she created a character -out of bricks and
straw supplied only meagrely by the playwright, and that
she literally acted the woman who was Laurette Taylor
into a role which itself did not in any way even faintly re-
semble her and which in sum, for all its embroideries, re-
mained Laurette Taylor from first to last? She did not, as
the expression goes, lose herself in the part. She lost, and
with uncommon beauty and effect, the part in Laurette
Taylor.

Where, in such a case, do the stern critical principles re-
garding the art of acting find themselves?

113

AN INSPECTOR CALLS. OCTOBER 21, 1947

A play by J. B. Priestley. Produced by Courtney Burr and
Lassor H. Grosberg for 95 performances in the Booth
Theatre.

PROGRAM:

ARTHUR BIRUNG Melville Cooper
GERAU> CROFT John Buckmaster
SHKTT.A. BIBUNG Rene Ray

SYBIL BIRUNG Doris Lloyd

EIXNA Patricia Marmont

EBIC BIRUNG John Merivale

INSPECTOR GOOLE

Thomas Mitchell

It is an evening in spring, 1912.

AH three acts, which are continuous, take place in the dining-
room, of the BirUngs' house in Brumley 3 an industrial city in the north
midlands.

Director: Cedric Hardwicke.

a

OF THE most overdone plots in the modern drama
is that in which a strange individual insinuates himself
into a household of hypocritical, uncertain and bewildered
folk and eventually awakens them to a recognition of their
true inner selves. The visitor is sometimes a male, some-
times a female, but in either case is invested with a more
or less mysterious and inscrutable presence. If a male, he
may vaguely be hinted to be of divine origin, as in The
Passing Of The Third Floor Back, The Servant In The
House, etc., or, if the playwright be of waggish bent, may
be ultimately revealed, for all the stir he has wrought, as
something of a loafer, as in A t Mrs. Beam's, etc. If the
caller be female, she most often is either one about whom
little is known save that she has led what may politely be
termed a worldly life, as in A Strange Woman, Outrageous
Fortune, etc., or one about whom slightly more is known,
including the impolite fact that, unlike the other and
despite her comparative inscrutability, she has accepted
money for it, as in Passersby, The Outcast, etc. So appar-
ently irresistible is the theme, indeed, that sometimes the
role is even reduced to ingenue status and its incumbent

114 An Inspector Calls

presented with no enigmatical rigmarole but simply as a
chick whose wide-eyed artlessness and natural frankness
charm the previously unsweet household into an affinity
with angel-cake, as in Peg o' My Heart, et al.

A variation of the plot shows up once again in Mr.
Priestley's play. In this case the visitor is intimated to be a
creature possessed of a divination approaching the super-
natural, though what he seems rather to be is simply Con-
science out of the old morality plays dressed not in the
usual black and white nightshirt but in a brown mufti
number. As is customary in plays of the kind, the intima-
tion is conveyed to the audience by having a sensitive fe-
male character suddenly pause from time to time, permit
a look of perplexity to cross her features, and gaze at the
other characters with an expression suggesting that her
scanties have got loose from their moorings. The caller's
business similarly follows the familiar basic pattern and
the household, come eleven o'clock, is duly brought to
realize the error of its previous ways.

Priestley, as is his wont, here and there writes intelli-
gently and agreeably but, as is also frequently his wont,
does not sufficiently convert the intelligent and agreeable
writing into satisfactory drama. There is the feeling about
most of his plays that they are first drafts, impatiently re-
leased to clear his desk for the next one. At the rate he has
been going, he will probably toss off more before he fin-
ishes than even Lope de Vega or Owen Davis and, unless
he takes greater care with them, they will not be any better
than the great majority of those artisans*. There are one or
two tolerable scenes in this, his latest, but on the whole it
repeats itself with the embarrassing insistence of spaghetti
marinara, and with the same disturbing taste.

Cedric Hardwicke's direction is first-rate, and the better
performances are those of Melville Cooper, Rene Ray and
John Buckmaster, though surely not that of Thomas
Mitchell, who brings to the role of the occult caller only
that kind of studied, mechanical underplaying which
passes with uneducated audiences for extraordinarily ex-
perienced emotional control and inner understanding.

October 21, 1947 115

The play in several directions indicates the haste in
which it was written. Since it makes motions, however
awkward, toward some quality, one may fairly ask ques-
tions in its presence which would be foolish in the case of
frankly cheap box-office goods. Why, for instance, do the
characters who suspect the visitor to be no inspector at all
but an impostor not demand to see his credentials or call
up police headquarters at once instead of delaying until
the very end of the play? Why did the presumptively sym-
pathetic heroine, declared as being not of easy virtue, fre-
quent a bar for promiscuous women after her first experi-
ence with illicit sex gained there? Is there not considerable
coincidence stretching in the circumstance that the pro-
spective son-in-law of the household and the son thereof
have enjoyed directly successive affairs with the girl with-
out either, though intimately associated, being aware of
the fact? And so on.

In another direction, had Priestley taken the time to
scrutinize his manuscript more closely, would he not have
deleted the surplusage of its sermonizing on the responsi-
bility of the individual for the acts of others? It presently
obtrudes like a pastor at a cocktail party, though cocktail
party is scarcely a term to be employed in connection with
so teetotalitarian a play. And would he have allowed him-
self a trick ending, which in any dramatic case is scarcely
appropriate to a play which asks one to submit seriously to
the body of its argument? Mr. Priestley, in short, is a care-
less craftsman, and careless craftsmen are certain to foun-
der in any such dramaturgical attempt to dovetail mysti-
cism and reality.

116

THE DRUID CIRCLE. OCTOBER 22, 1947

A play by John van Druten. Produced by Alfred de Liagre,
Jr., for 69 performances in the Morosco Theatre.

PROGRAM

TOM LLOYD-ELLIS Walter S tarkey
MEGAN LEWIS Susan Douglas

Neva Patterson
Ethel Griffies

Miss DAGNALL Lilian Bronson
PROFESSOR WHITE Leo G. CarroU
PROFESSOR PARRY PHILLIPS

Noel Leslie
MADDOX Boyd Crawford

TOBIN Aidan Turner

BRENDA MADDOX

MRS. WHITE

Miss TREVELYAN Merle Maddern

BLODWEN

Cherry Hardy

SYNOPSIS: The action passes in the early twenties in a small
university town near the borders of England and Wales. Act I. Scene 1.
The senior common room. Mid-morning, Wednesday. Scene 2. The Mad-
denes' -flat. Late the same afternoon. Act II. Professor Whites flat. Satur-
day afternoon. Act III. Scene 1. The senior common room. Tuesday morn-
ing. Scene 2. The Maddoxes' flat. Tuesday evening.

Director: John van Druten.

I

N THE INSTANCE of this latest play by the talented van
Druten, I feel much like the juryman in the old story.
After long and exhausting days, opposing counsel in a case
were able to find only one juror upon whom both could
agree. Putting their despairing heads together, they finally
concluded, with the court's permission, to dispense with
the other eleven and to trust the issue to the single selec-
tion. When the trial was finished, he was bidden to retire
and to meditate his decision. After some hours he re-
turned, took his place in the box, and was asked by the
judge if he had arrived at a verdict. He nodded that he
had. The judge instructed him to face the court and to
state it. "I disagree/' he announced.

Like that juror, I disagree with myself over The Druid
Circle. On the one hand, it approaches its subject matter
intelligently but, on the other, does not sufficiently resolve
the intelligent approach into consistently engaging drama.
On the one hand, it is interesting in separate episodes but,

October 22, 1947 117

on the other, fails to maintain that interest in its entirety,
On the one hand, it is ably written if considered scene by
scene but, on the other, is less ably written if considered as
a whole, since its dramaturgical design has too little cohe-
sion. It is effective in part, but in general too languid and
dawdling. It proves again its author's sharp sense of char-
acter, but the characters do not always serve toward the
necessary dramatic vitality. It is, in brief, to be respected
for its honesty and periodic skill, but in the end it does
not satisfy.

It is the author's purpose to indicate, through the per-
son of a sterile college professor long bogged down in the
academic groove, that a pathological hatred of youth and
youth's ways may develop in such a man, and to such a de-
gree that his overt acts may bring tragedy to the objects of
his aversion* After a tedious first act in which the ground-
plan is laid with the painstaking of a one-armed landscape
gardener, van Druten brings his theme into direct focus in
a second, but there is yet a third which backs and fills and
gets less than an inch or two beyond what the preceding
act has seated and accomplished. It is an act arbitrarily
made to kill time until its final three minutes wherein is
suggested the professor's mild seizure of doubt over his an-
tecedent malicious conduct in torturing a boy and girl stu-
dent with a passionate love letter written by the former
which has fallen into his possession.

By far the best scene, a fresh and initiatedly written one,
is that in the middle act between the dried-out, hidebound
professor and his liberal-minded and sharp-mouthed old
mother. It is in van Druten's most original and most ad-
mired comedy vein, and I hope that I do not too greatly
exceed the accepted limits of criticism in regarding an au-
thor's work when I allow that I wish he might abandon
these not altogether successful excursions into serious
drama and devote himself to the comedy form in which he
has demonstrated himself to be so pleasantly accomplished.

The author's direction of his play is, as usual, of a high
proficiency, and several of the acting performances, espe-
cially those of Leo G. Carroll as the protagonist and Ethel

118 The Druid Circle

Griffies as his maternal parent, are laudable. There is a
nice bit, also, by a promising novice, Neva Patterson, in
the role of the wife of a younger professor whose sympa-
thies are with the oppressed and tormented youths. The
play in its tryout stage was laid in 1912 and the dress of
the characters was of that period. Just before the New
York opening, the period was advanced to the early igso's
and, with little time for new costuming, the actors were
left largely to their own devices. The consequence was a
sartorial hybrid of high-buttoned jackets, pleated trousers
and sports sweaters that made most of the male characters
look as if they were their own fathers wearing parts of their
sons' wardrobes at a reunion of the class of 1940.

119

HOBOES IN HEAVEN. OCTOBER 28, 1947

A fantasy by G. M. Martens and Andrd Obey, with inci-
dental music by Claude Arrieu. Produced by the Black-
friars' Guild for 24 performances in the Blackfriars* Guild
Theatre.

PROGHAM

BOULE

FLAVTE

GoELEEE

SEXTON

RJPETJE

MANSE

DjAJEKE

JACKASS

CONSTABLE

BELLHOP

Kate Gibbons

Gertrude Murphy

AlfredReffly

WtfbamDunn

Margaret Mohan

Charles Metten

Tom O'Connor

Warren Burmeister

Alan Mazza

BARTENDER
LUCIFER
BALTIE
ST. MICHAEL
ST. NICGDEMUS
ST. NICHOLAS
ST. PETER
BLESSED VIRGIN

Nappy Whiting
Alan Glendening
Kate Gibbons
Michael O'Casey
Nappy Whiting
AngyVitanza
Tom O'Connor

Rose Mary Mechem

SYNOPSIS: Act L A tap-room. Act H Scene 1. Ante-room to
Hades. Scene 2. Gate to Heaven. Act III. The tap-room.
Director: Dennis Gurney.

L NDRE OBEY, known to American audiences only
through his Noah, Lucrece, and his collaboration with
Denys Amiel, The Wife With A Smile (La Souriante
Mme. Beaudet) , is a witty Frenchman whose other plays
have been considered too unsubstantial for the American
stage by producers of such exceptionally substantial drama
as Laura, I Gotta Get Out,, How I Wonder, Duet For Two
Hands, and similar refreshments. In this case, he is repre-
sented merely as an adapter, since the play is the product
of the Flemish Martens. Exactly what he did or did not
contribute to it I can not say, the original being unknown
to me. Ignorance is further complicated by the circum-
stance that his adaptation has been readapted by local am-
ateur hands. The end-product is a garble of fantasy and
farce which in no detail suggests anything resembling the
Obey we know and which is altogether rather undeiicious.

120 Hoboes in Heaven

There may have been a theme of some point in the orig-
inal but, if there is one in this mangled version, I do not
seem to be able to ferret it out. All that I can exhume is a
confused and duncish to-do about a pair of tramps who are
run down by an automobile and declared dead, who find
themselves alternately in Hell and Heaven, who are offered
a Liliom-ltke chance to return to earth and redeem them-
selves, and who are eventually found not to have died but
possibly to have dreamed their adventures.

The acting, direction, and staging were more hellish
than heavenly; and the incidental music only aggravated
matters.

121

THE WINSLOW BOY. OCTOBER 29, 1947

A play by Terence Rattigan. Produced by the Theatre
Guild, H. M. Tennant, Ltd., and John C. Wilson for 215
performances in the Empire Theatre.

PROGRAM

JOHN WATHERSTONE

Michael Kmgsley

DESMOND CURRY George Benson
Miss BARNES Dorothy Hamilton
FRED Leonard MicheU

SIR ROBERT MORTON Frank AHenby

RONNIE WINSLOW Michael Nev>eU
VIOLET Betty Sinclair

GRACE WINSLOW Madge Compton
ARTHUR WINSLOW Alan Webb

CATHERINE WINSLOW

Valerie White
DICKIE WINSLOW Owen Holder

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in Arthur Window's house in
Kensington, London, shortly before the frst World War. Act I. Scene 1.
A Sunday morning in July. Scene 2. An afternoon in April ( nine months
later). Act IE. Scene 1. An evening in January (nine months later).
Scene 2. An afternoon in June (five months later).

Director: Glen By am Shaw.

T

JLHI

PLAY, based on the celebrated Archer-Shee case,
treats of a British father's long battle to clear his fourteen-
year-old son of the charge of having stolen a small sum of
money while a cadet at the Osborne naval academy. The
fight becomes a national issue, is debated in Parliament,
and wrecks the father's health and fortune, but eventually
succeeds in freeing the boy from suspicion and in establish-
ing the rights of private citizens against bureaucratic arro-
gance. The exhibit is, of course, at bottom the familiar one
in which a person wrongly accused of a crime is finally,
after more vicissitudes than an audience can shake a stick
at, declared innocent and falls again, exhausted but tri-
umphant, into the arms of his loved ones; and by making
the accused a youngster, the theme naturally gains an added
theatrical value.

Back in the iSgo's, particularly in England, which is the
birthplace of the specimen under scrutiny, it was the cus-

122 The Winslow Boy

torn to center the plots of such plays on a big cross-exam-
ination scene, usually in those days concerned with uncov-
ering an illicit sexual episode in the past life of the female
protagonist. Mr. Rattigan here again borrows it from the
long ago and presents it in variation as one in which a cel-
ebrated lawyer confronts the accused boy and over a con-
siderable period tries to break down his profession of inno-
cence. It still, despite its age, makes for a good scene, and
as played by Frank Allenby and young Michael Newell,
momentarily induces one to suspend critical cynicism and
interestedly to accept it much as a child similarly accepts,
with an eye on the potential two-bits in his grandfather's
hand, one of the old gaffer's oft repeated stories. The play
on the whole, indeed, though its mechanism is always vis-
ible and ticks loudly and though some of its scenes are ar-
bitrarily written into it rather than, as the German musical
phrase goes, composed through it, amounts to very fair
theatrical goods. There are even times when it is a little
better than just that, since its author, though operating in
what is generally a journeyman box-office style, shrewdly
strains what might readily become crude melodrama
through a sieve of humor. Some of the latter, emanating
from character, falls nicely into the pattern. But at other
times his all too evident effort to cadge the groundlings
brings him to such passages as the elegantly reserved coun-*
sellor's stylishly superior objection to the bad English in
the phrase "nation-wide laughing-stock" and, a moment
later, his observation that he can not abide the House of
Commons because of "the cold drafts and the hot air/'

Any such play obviously stands or falls on its acting and
this one gets the benefit of some able, which by virtue of
the precise British accents accompanying it persuades an
American audience that it is much finer than merely that %
Of the players, the best are Webb and the before men-
tioned Allenby, the latter of whom enjoys that elaborate
poise and air of high address which were the property of
Alexander, Faversham, Hawtrey and other such grandees
of a bygone stage and which, criticize as hamminess if you
will, are all the same immensely effective.

October 29, 1947 123

Unlike the monolingual American traveling in Ger-
many who, looking upon the numerous signs Autobahn,
was puzzled by the many tributes to America's foremost
ornithologist, I do not find it at all difficult to understand
why the Ellen Terry award, England's equivalent of the lo-
cal Pulitzer Prize, was bestowed upon the play. It is simply
that most awards in any country designed to recognize
plays of real merit are most often given to plays largely
without it. I sometimes believe that if only an annual
award were to be instituted for the worst play we might
very possibly be gratified to find in th play at least some
of the quality which the various boards of award presently
profess to see in their choices of best. Mr. Rattigan's play
is very far from falling into the category of worst; it is, as
has been said, fairly impressive showshop material; but if
it was the best play of its English year, God save the Eng-
lish drama.

124

EDITH PIAF AND COMPANY
OCTOBER 30, 1947

A vaudeville bill Produced by Clifford C. Fischer for 48
performances in the Playhouse.

PRINCIPALS

Edith Piaf, Les Compagnons de la Chanson, Les Canova, George and
Tim Donnonde, Alma and Fleury, and George Andr6 Martin.

T

JLHI

LHE SHOW, including its star, is the kind encountered in
the past in one or another of the little music halls on the
Paris Left Bank, admission to which was a few francs or, in
some cases, merely the appearance of having enough sous
in one's pocket to pay for a beer. At a theatre price of four
dollars and eighty cents, it is in an anomalous position,

The first part of the bill consists in a pair of alleged
Greek dancers, male and female, who perform less well
than any pair of chorus dancers in a local Jerome Robbins
or Agnes de Mille show. The couple is followed by a male
duo who perform, as God is our judge, on unicycles, one
of them seemingly being of the opinion that homosexual
conduct is amusing. Now still another male couple with
nude, thickly powdered bodies who, after the routine prin-
ciples of the many vaudeville equilibrist acts which, like
this one, are invariably billed as "Poetry In Motion," alter-
nately lift each other slowly and with a great deal of mus-
cle quivering off the floor and then slowly and with a
great deal of muscle quivering again deposit each other on
it. Follows a portly Gaul who fits miniature costumes to his
right hand and mimics various dancers with his fingers. He
is expert at the trick. And, finally, nine young Frenchmen
who call themselves "Les Compagnons de la Chanson/' who
give their impressions of an American jazz band, American
microphone crooners, Russian Cossack choirs, etc., and
who on the opening night were cheered, by what was ap-

October 30, 1947 125

patently a copious claque, with considerably more volume
than would be the portion of the nine members of the Su-
preme Court if they unanimously rendered a decision that
the legal limit of personal taxes was henceforth fifty cents
a head. The young men, it seemed to me, were only moder-
ately entertaining, since I can no longer find much exhila-
ration in the old-time two-a-day comedy act in which a
man exercises himself frantically in trying to lift the lid of
a grand piano and in which after a great flourish on the
keyboard he pauses a moment and then hits a high note
with his little finger, or in imitations of the contortions of
jazz musicians and, at this late hour, of the March of the
Wooden Soldiers.

The second part of the evening is devoted to Mile. Piaf.
The Mile. Piaf is a small, chunky woman with tousled red-
dish hair, heavily mascara'd eyes, and a mouth made up to
look like a quart bottle of metaphen. According to a quo-
tation from one Schoenbrun in the playbill, "She is the
particular favorite of the midinette, the charwoman, the
poor student, the factory worker, the millions of pale, thin
girls who live gray, toil-worn lives. Piaf is each one of them.
When *La Mome" (as she is known) sings of her cold-water
flat, her 'cracked walls and gondola bed/ she is moaning
for all of them. When Piaf finds a lover who holds her in
his arms and turns her miserable room into a palace, you
can hear the sighs of happiness from the crowded music
hall as each Parisienne finds escape with Piaf." *

Very probably. For there can be small doubt that our
chanteuse has the forlorn appearance and melancholy
mien, sedulously accented by shabby dress and the other
accepted stage concomitants of poverty, which always com-
panionably impress the emotions of counterparts in life.
And that impression is automatically deepened by a voice
which, whatever the nature of the song, cultivates the pitch
and tone of gulpy despair. So much may be granted Piaf.
But, for all the fact that she seems to have been very suc-
cessful in liquefying her French clientele, not quite so
much may be granted her on the score of any real artistry.
She sings all songs much alike. There is scarcely any change

126 Edith Piaf and Company

in emotional pattern, or in expression, or in projection.
One and all begin in a low key and mount gradually into
a terrific abdominal, chest and laryngeal explosion, accom-
panied either by the pointing of the index finger at the au-
dience or by the extension of the arms laterally. And all
are sold with the same set woebegone look, the same set air
of heartbroken but brave defeat.

The repertory, as has been intimated, is, furthermore,
largely the standard boulevard one: the song about Va-
mour, the song about the married woman retracing the
joys and sorrows of her tragic life, the one about the little
merry-go-round in the park in the days when the singer
was happy, the other one about the forsaken prostitute,
and so on.

That returning American voyagers often go overboard
in their testimonials to such singers is an old story. It is
also an understandable one, in a manner. The impulse to
overrate a performer whom one has heard in some out of
the way little spot in a foreign country and whom one feels
one has one's self surprisingly discovered is common to
most travellers, particularly those who have wandered out
into the Paris night with a few drinks under their belts
and, possibly, with a pretty girl to hold hands with while
the singer is sighing of love. Under such circumstances
Piaf would undoubtedly do. But on the stage of a cold-
sober theatre and in a colder and more critical land I sus-
pect that her appeal misses something.

127

TRIAL HONEYMOON. NOVEMBER 3, 1947

A farce-comedy by Conrad S. Smith. Produced by Harry
Rosen for 8 performances in the Royale Theatre.

PROGB AM

DR. TRUMBULL Stapleton Kent
BILL DANIELS Ed Moroney

IRENE SMITH Eileen Heckart

HdefiWoters

ELSIE Mildred Mtmroe

LINDA MELTON EUen Fenwick
CRAIG DENNING Joel Thomas

GEORGE WILLOUGHBY

Jack Fletcher

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. Bungalow No. 9, Hotel Del Rey, near
Los Angeles, noon on a June day in 1946. Scene 2. Late afternoon. Act
II. Scene 1. That evening. Scene 2. Later tiiat evening. Act Iff. The next
morning.

Director: Edtoard Ludlum.

A:

PRODUCT of the summer theatre circuit, the play is of
the sort which too often provokes sarcastic comment on
the rural playhouses in toto. It is, true enough, an oppro-
brious little thing, with its amateurishly written story of a
couple whose marriage ceremony is delayed and who go
away on an impromptu honeymoon, but to believe that it
represents the summer theatre stages in the aggregate is
scarcely the fact. The latter, it seems to me, have been get-
ting an unfair deal for some time now. It is not, certainly,
that they haven't their several shortcomings say about
forty or fifty but, along with them, they also have their
virtues, and it is these that are generally lost sight of. They
provide, first, both individually and collectively a reper-
tory theatre that meets the requirements of those who en-
dorse repertory as one of the desirable items of the dra-
matic stage. They secondly keep the spirit of the theatre
alive in the municipally dead summer season and bring
the drama to many people in towns and villages remote
from the theatrical centers. They thirdly afford employ-
ment and a livelihood to many actors and actresses. They

128 Trial Honeymoon

fourthly give the latter valuable added training and expe-
rience. And they fifthly provide a testing ground for new
scripts. That they also in the general process occasionally
provide some audience pain is, as has been intimated, per-
fectly true. But pain is often the handmaiden of ultimate
accomplishment.

One of the most effective means of ridicule is to attach a
catchy derogatory label to a person or an object. Such la-
bels as "cowsheds/* "barn theatres," etc., promiscuously
pasted on the bucolic playhouses, have accordingly brought
them into disrepute. Probably not more than one out of
every five of the playhouses was originally a cowshed or
barn, but such is the power of the labels that most people
expect a cow or a horse to amble out onto their stages at
any moment. The first step the theatres should take is to
band together and form a committee of defence and at-
tack after the technique of the city of Grand Rapids, Mich-
igan. Let anyone write and any editor print a facetious al-
lusion to that city in terms of the furniture which has
made it famous and not only stern demands for retraction
but grim threats of lawsuits involving millions of dollars
are the immediate consequence. The next time anyone re-
fers to one of the summer theatres' converted town halls or
churches or especially constructed edifices as a mule garage
or a pig salon, let the manager set up a Grand Rapids howl.
He may, true enough, not be able to collect any monetary
damages (though I don't see why he shouldn't) , but he
will at least get some very good publicity, which is always
helpful.

The trouble with big city critics of the rural theatres is
that they criticize them from the big city viewpoint. This
is quite meet so far as the craft of criticism goes, but it is
considerably less meet otherwise and practically. The little
rural theatre is simply the big city theatre on vacation in
slacks and sports shirt, and to expect it or ask it to behave
city-wise is unjust and senseless* What is more, to imagine
that that liberal share of its audience which is recruited
from residents in the adjacent hamlets is as knowing in the
ways of drama and acting as city folk are supposed to be is

November 3, 1947 129

equally foolish. And what is still more, to hope to train it
overnight into any such knowledge and appreciation is
doubly so. Yet this seems to be the attitude of those urban
critics who travel out into the countryside or motor from
their woodland retreats to appraise the little showhouses.
They do not expect the small country fairs and carnivals to
be Coney Island or Ringlings' Circus, but they appear to
expect the small summer theatres to be the counterparts of
those on Broadway.

All this is not to say that I have recanted and regard the
pastoral houses with a rich and beaming eye. If some of
them now and again are deserving of pleasant words, a lot
more are scarcely the stuff on which critical dreams are
made. That is not the point. The point is that, however
I personally may or may not feel about them, they serve
a rather valuable purpose and that to dismiss them with a
superior shrug isn't cricket. There are a number of things
that do not enchant me, yet, like the rural theatres, they
nevertheless are hardly on that score to be condemned, and
thus to condemn them would be the mark of a grandiose
half-wit. I am not, for example, impressed as many others
are by the tonal art of George Gershwin, the literature of
Andre Maurois, the humor of P. G- Wodehouse, the paint-
ing of Braque, or the Italian cuisine. But they surely are
not to be summarily deposited in the ashcan on that
ground. And so it is that, while the rustic drama may not
inspire me to throw my hat into the air and myself along
with it, I am still bountiful enough to allow that it has its
place in the theatrical scheme of things.

I will not go so far as to say that any theatre is better
than no theatre. No theatre would be a great deal better
than the kind of Broadway theatre which heaves at us stuff
like The Magic Touch, Heads Or Tails, and this Trial
Honeymoon. And no theatre would be a lot better than
the kind of rural summer theatre which offers their equiv-
alent, with equally bad acting. But even a fair rural thea-
tre is much better than no rural theatre at all, and that is
the sum and substance of the argument.

The previous summer, with more than one hundred of

130 Trial Honeymoon

the little houses in full flower, proved that there is a place
for the out-of-season drama, and a rather big place at that.
It also proved that more and more people are becoming
interested in the living drama and perhaps less rapturously
interested in its filmed counterpart, which promises well
for the theatre's future. After all, people have to go through
kindergarten before they can enter grammar school and
through grammar and high school before they achieve col-
lege. The little theatres are, variously, those earlier schools.
The spitballs, pigtail pulling, and bent pins on their seats
are a part of their being, and as such are paternally to be
overlooked and forgiven.

As to the performance of the unseemly example of sum-
mer dramatic art under consideration, silence is not only
golden but is set with a large ruby.

131

THIS TIME TOMORROW, NOVEMBER 3, 1947

A play by Jan de Hartog, originally called Death Of A Rat.
Produced by the Theatre Guild for 32 performances in
the Barryrnore Theatre.

PBOGRAM

WILTS John Archer

KAKEXS Tyler Carpenter

YOLAN Ruth Ford

WOOTERSON Sam Jaffe

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. A dissecting room in the Amsterdam
Institute of Scientific Research, prior to the Nazi invasion, Scene 2. The
deck of a ferry boat on the Zuyderzee, prior to the Spanish Civil War.
Scene 3. A room in Dr. Wouterson's house, Amsterdam, some weeks
later. Act IE. Scene 1. The dissecting room. Scene 2. A room in Dr. Wou-
terson's house. Scene 3. The same 9 one week later. Scene 4. The dissect-
ing room.

Director: Paul Crabtree.

L.SHTON STEVENS reports that at the fall of the final cur-
tain on the opening night of the play's Chicago tryout, Mr.
Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme
Court turned to him and exclaimed, "I give up! Now I re-
alize what Mark Twain meant when he said, 'The more
you explain it, the more I don't understand it/ " May I dis-
sent from the learned Justice's opinion? I boast that I un-
derstand it perfectly, and without need of any explanation
whatsoever. It is, I may confide to the eminent jurist, gassy
balderdash pretentiously offered as profundity, and with
little more sense than a pack of mousehounds.

It may be, however, that de Hartog is a slick young Hol-
lander who possibly appreciates that there is no better way
to put over a play on any pseudo-highbrow producer than
that employed by the meat-market chiselers. Which is to
say, the palming off of a small pork chop as of surplus heft
by fixing the scales with a false weight. And when it comes
to false weight, our Dutch brother is one of the best flim-
flammers the theatre has laid eyes on in a long time. His

130 Trial Honeymoon

the little houses in full flower, proved that there is a place
for the out-of-season drama, and a rather big place at that.
It also proved that more and more people are becoming
interested in the living drama and perhaps less rapturously
interested in its filmed counterpart, which promises well
for the theatre's future. After all, people have to go through
kindergarten before they can enter grammar school and
through grammar and high school before they achieve coL
lege. The little theatres are, variously, those earlier schools.
The spitballs, pigtail pulling, and bent pins on their seats
are a part of their being, and as such are paternally to be
overlooked and forgiven.

As to the performance of the unseemly example of sum-
mer dramatic art under consideration, silence is not only
golden but is set with a large ruby.

131

THIS TIME TOMORROW. NOVEMBER 3, 1947

A play by Jan de Hartog, originally called Death Of A Rat.
Produced by the Theatre Guild for 32 performances in
the Barrymore Theatre.

PROGRAM:

WELTS John Archer

KABELS Tyler Carpenter

YOLAN Ruth Ford

WOUTERSON Sam Jaffe

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. A dissecting room in the Amsterdam
Institute of Scientific Research, prior to the Nazi invasion. Scene 2. The
deck of a ferry boat on the Zvyderzee, prior to the Spanish Civil War.
Scene 3. A room in Dr. Wouterson's house, Amsterdam, some weeks
later. Act EL Scene 1. The dissecting room. Scene 2. A room in Dr. Wou-
terson's house. Scene 3. The same* one week later. Scene 4. The dissect-
ing room.

Director: Paul Crabtree.

LSHTON STEVENS reports that at the fall of the final cur-
tain on the opening night of the play's Chicago tryout, Mr.
Justice Robert H. Jackson of the United States Supreme
Court turned to him and exclaimed, "I give up! Now I re-
alize what Mark Twain meant when he said, 'The more
you explain it, the more I don't understand it/ " May I dis-
sent from the learned Justice's opinion? I boast that I un-
derstand it perfectly, and without need of any explanation
whatsoever. It is, I may confide to the eminent jurist, gassy
balderdash pretentiously offered as profundity, and with
little more sense than a pack of mousehounds.

It may be, however, that de Hartog is a slick young Hol-
lander who possibly appreciates that there is no better way
to put over a play on any pseudo-highbrow producer than
that employed by the meat-market chiselers. Which is to
say, the palming off of a small pork chop as of surplus heft
by fixing the scales with a false weight. And when it comes
to false weight, our Dutch brother is one of the best flim-
flammers the theatre has laid eyes on in a long time. His

132 This Time Tomorrow

play is one-ounce drama passed off for an intellectual, phil-
osophical and scientific ton by loading it up with solemn
bosh about everything from hypnotism to symbolic astrol-
ogy, from cancer research to metaphysics, and from psy-
cho-therapeutics to what well may be the most revolution-
ary theory heard of in the world since Genesis, to wit, that,
if a woman of nymphomaniac tendencies pines for love
and gets it, her contentment will be so great that it will
kill her.

There are, of course, people who, like the minds respon-
sible for the production, are inclined to accept nonsense
obscurely stated as something doubtless invested with a
rare and remarkable significance. De Hartog is in this di-
rection the kind of dramatist who is their true beloved. Ex-
ercising an elaborate species of double-talk, he contrives to
persuade them that he has so much to say that the very
volume of his ideas must inevitably crowd out any coher-
ence of expression. What he really amounts to, at least on
this occasion, is an intellectual soft-shoe dancer executing
his intricate steps on a wet featherbed. He has not only ob-
viously bitten off more than he can chew but, fuller to the
point, has ostentatiously chewed more than he has bitten
off. The consequence is that his mouth performs some very
violent motions and that what comes out of it approxi-
mates zero.

This is one case where seeing is not believing, since what
goes on on the stage would drive Ripley to drink. There is,
for example, a parallel between the death of a clinical lab-
oratory rat from cancer and the death of a young woman
from a lover's kiss, which certainly is going to scare the day-
lights out of a lot of hitherto amiable girls, dammit. There
is, for another or at least it sounded that way to me
the idea that unanticipated rain is somehow associated
with the transmigration of souls, which in the best inter-
ests of coming generations caused me charitably to go out
and buy a heavy raincoat. And there is also, after two hours
of complicated psychical argument, the announcement that
the moribund heroine, who is already dead from tubercu-
losis but doesn't seem to know it and who has visions, is

November 3, 1947 133

proof of an after-life. In other words that, if a human be-
ing is dead, a second death will indicate that she did not
die either the first time or the second but that she is still in
some mystical way alive, a philosophy obviously derived
from Joe Cook's Four Hawaiians.

It is all reminiscent of a day years ago when Harry
Kemp, the Greenwich Village poet, came into Mencken's
and my editorial quarters and declared that he had writ-
ten a one-act play which we would be proud to buy and
publish in our magazine. "What's it about?" we asked. "It's
about a tornado that destroys an oil-well," he informed us.
"A flood follows, and then a thunderstorm, and a horse
breaks loose, upsets a lamp, and sets fire to a house in
which an old grandmother is nursing her baby. A dis-
tracted cow dashes madly into the burning oil-well and the
old grandfather jumps up from his wheel-chair and chases
the cow half a mile down the road into another house that
has been uprooted by the cataclysm. In the uprooted house
lives a family of ten and in which three of the children are
dying of starvation. The horse reappears in the uprooted
house and seizes up the children in its teeth, but at that in-
stant is killed by a bolt of lightning."

"What happens then?" we politely inquired.

"Then," proclaimed the author, "he tells her that he
loves her!"

I will not accuse de Hartog of having plagiarized Kemp's
masterpiece, since he undoubtedly never heard of it, but
he certainly in some way has managed to duplicate very
closely its technical lucidity.

Whenever any such play shows up, it induces people
who are bored stiff by it nevertheless flatteringly to remark
that it took courage to produce it. What it takes, of course,
is not courage but dumbness. Which recalls the late Helen
Westley, who for many years was a member o this same
Theatre Guild's board of directors. On the Guild's open-
ing nights, the grand old girl, begauded as ever like the
gypsy queen in a 1890 comic opera, always deposited her-
self in a seat on the aisle in one of the rear TOWS of the the-
atre. On the various occasions when her Guild associates

134 This Time Tomorrow

saw fit to put on plays like this de Hartog exhibit, it was
her pleasure to hail me on my way out at the first intermis-
sion and loudly to assure me that if I didn't think the play
was a polecat I was crazy. At the second intermission, she
would lean over as I went up the aisle and beamingly yell,
"See, I told you! It's getting even lousier!" And at the eve-
ning's end she would grab me by the arm and gleefully
shout, "My God, did you ever see anything like it?'*

I miss her.

Adding to the cramps of the present offering was the pre-
historic kind of direction, by Paul Crabtree, which made
the actors face the audience when they were addressing
each other, bend wistfully over the various articles of fur-
niture, throw open doors to determine whether anyone
was eavesdropping, and recite such haplessly undeleted
lines as "the stars are like cold diamonds." The acting of
John Archer as a Dutch medical scientist resembling one
of the pugs in Is Zat So?,, Ruth Ford as the female zombie
with a face made up with three parts borax to one part to-
mato juice, and Sam Jaffe as a combination Freud and
Swedenborg in an Elbert Hubbard wig and the usual in-
tellectually baggy pants, was, to put it chivalrously, at least
appropriate to the script.

135

FOR LOVE OR MONEY. NOVEMBER 4, 1947

A comedy by F. Hugh Herbert. Produced by Barnard
Straus for the rest of the season's performances in the
Henry Miller Theatre.

PROGRAM

NITA HAVEMEYER

Vicki Ctanmmgs

MBS. EARLY Maida Reade

QUEENIE Elizabeth Brew

WILBUR Grocer Burgess

MBS. TREMAINE Paula Trueman
MR. TBEMAINB Kirk Brown

BILL TREMAINE Mark O*Daniels
PRESTON MITCHELL John Loder
JANET BLAKE June Lockhart

SYNOPSIS; The entire action takes place in the drawing-room of
Preston Mitchell? s home at Port Washington, Long Island during Decem-
ber, 1946. Act I. Scene 1. Late Monday afternoon. Scene 2. Several hours
later. Act LI. Scene 1. The folfawing morning. Scene 2. The following
Sunday. Act m. Scene 1. Later that evening. Scene 2. The following
night.

Director: Harry EUerbe.

T

JLHE PLAY may be a rubbishy affair and unworthy of the
attention of fastidious criticism, but there is nevertheless
one thing about it that appeals to a man of my advanced
years. My satisfaction, indeed my rapture, is derived from
its theory that very young and very beautiful girls enter-
tain an admiration and even passion for us old boys which
they do not share for our youthful rivals, and are ready at
the snap of a finger to drop the latter where they stand for
the overwhelming joy and privilege of sharing our exciting
company. Not, mind you, that I believe it for a moment
a conviction perforce imposed upon any old fellow with
any experience in the matter but it is pleasant and
soothing dope just the same, I can't imagine any finer es-
cape to be found in the whole theatre. It may make the
young of the species derisively laugh their damned heads
off, but with me it's grand. There I sit, my features envel-
oped in a superior smugness, and in my gratified mind's-
eye vision myself, despite my sciatica, arteriosclerosis and

136 For Love or Money

hundred or so other malaises, amorously pursued by the
choicest of ingenues, soubrettes and debutantes, all of an
inordinate loveliness, and all rich. There I sit and bask in
the fancy of innumerable voluptuous affairs of the heart
with such fair young creatures, all of whom literally force
themselves upon me despite my gruff reluctance. There I
sit and have the vicarious time of my life, at least until a
little sense unwelcomely intrudes itself upon me and makes
me wish that playwrights like this Herbert would before
they manufacture such moonshine study plays like Davies*
A Single Man and van Druten's The Mermaids Singing
and learn to appreciate that what they imagine is flattering
to us old goats would, if it were a fact, bore the life out of
us in no time. But, being what they naively are, they con-
tinue peddling their May-December mush year upon year.
So far as I remember, the business began as far back as the
last century with Barriers The Professor's Love Story. And
it has since spread its pall in dozens of plays like Daddy,
Longlegs, Accent On Youth, Apple Of His Eye, etc.

Jenkins, my slippers and my pipe.

In this version, the young one again one night rushes
into the house of the middle-aged hero (he is a celebrated
actor this time instead of the more usual playwright or
novelist) to escape the attentions of the customary auto-
mobile Lothario. It is, of course, raining and the hero of
course again instructs her to remove her wet clothes and to
encase herself in one of his dressing-gowns, lest she perish
of pneumonia. While thus presumably semi-nude, the lit-
tle one is subjected to the habitual successive entrances of
the divers neighbors, along with the lady who has been the
hero's inamorata, and all, naturally and with the proper
amount of shock and indignation, place the worst construc-
tion on the situation. All, that is, save the neighbor's usual
young son, who is sentimentally fetched by the little one
and whose fetch seems for the time being to be recipro-
cated. But it is the elderly hero, obviously, who really at-
tracts the little one she finds him so understanding, so
generous, so decent, so awfully handsome and since, as
she says in the face of his magnanimous remonstrances, he

November 4, 1947 137

will only be one hundred when she is an old lady of forty
or so, a connubial embrace logically terminates the eve-
ning.

The author, being a product of the Hollywood moving
picture studios, relates the plot in the literary style indige-
nous to those ateliers and further mechanically falls back
upon scenes and situations out of the dusty dramatic cata-
logue. There is, for example, the one from David Garrick
in which the hero pretends to be a bounder in order to dis-
illusionize his young admirer. And the one paraphrased
from Clarice in which, to the same end, he tears up the pa-
pers on which she has been sincerely and hopefully work-
ing. And the "What's your name?'* curtain tag from Sa-
lomy Jane. And the man's mistress who pops in upon his
tryst with his new love from The Voice Of The Turtle.
And a half dozen others.

In the role of the little heroine, despite dialogue that
imposes upon her comments that all men are beasts, that a
woman above all dislikes pity, and that one feels very
drunk after a sip of brandy, a novice named June Lock-
hart is excellent. She manages a part that might easily be
repellently cute with no cuteness whatever; she reads her
dishonest lines with a convincing honesty; her expression
is fitted admirably to the role's varying moods; and she is
personable and all in all the best comedy ingenue the sea-
son has uncovered. And she has been a screen actress at
that. As the elderly lover, John Loder, another screen ac-
tor, on the contrary proves decisively that stage acting is
beyond him; his performance enjoys all the attributes of a
shop window dummy other than the latter's ease in fancy
clothes. Vicki Cummings is, as always, agreeable in her
usual role of the other woman. The rest are neither the
one thing nor the other, excepting Mark O'Daniels, as the
wooing young man, who runs Loder a neck-and-neck race
for the bad acting cup.

Two questions occur to me. In the first place, why do
the authors of these love and sex comedies so generally se-
lect trite titles like this For Love Or Money, which must al-
ready have been used many times and which doubtless is

138 For Love or Money

to be found in the "Plays For Amateurs" catalogues by the
dozen? Why don't they occasionally take a cue from the
French and hit upon something a little more lively? For
instance, something like Georges Feydeau's But Don't Go
Around Without Your Clothes; Achard's Can You Plant
Cabbages?, Attier's and Rieux's Lobster American Style,
Avoir's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, Brieux's The Cockchaf-
ers (Les Hannetons) , Coolus* Mirette Has Her Reasons,
etc.

Secondly, when these Hollywood authors with eyes
solely on the box-office concoct their plays, why don't they
go the whole hog and even more shamelessly than at pres-
ent, if a little more sagaciously, resort to some of the oldest
and apparently safest items in the American hokum tradi-
tion? As it is, they take altogether too many unnecessary
chances and frequently fail to swindle the theatre out of
so much as a dollar. (It was only June Lockhart that saved
this specimen from prompt collapse.) I suggest to them, for
example, that, when next they write a play, they make sure
that it contains a bell other than merely door or telephone.
Do not ask me why, but the records of the American stage
for the last sixty or more years indicate that nine out of ev-
ery ten plays with such bells figuring conspicuously in
them have been box-office successes. The bells may be of
almost any kind ship, locomotive, fire, church, or what
not but whatever they are they seem to be instrumental
in fascinating audiences. To enumerate the bell plays and
shows that have kept the ticket-sellers busy would call for
an entire chapter. Since any long list of names is inevitably
tiring to a reader, I put down just a few: Eight Bells, A
Midnight Bell,, The Still Alarm, The Bells, A Bell For
Adano, The Old Homestead, The Eternal City, The
Sunken Bell, Under The Gaslight, The Heart Of Mary-
land, The Miracle, The Chimes Of Normandy, The
Monks Of Malabar, The Yeomen Of The Guard, Via
Wireless, The Two Orphans, Ten-Minute Alibi . . .
These will suggest many others. Moreover and on the
other hand, unless iny statistics are faulty, not even one
failure among the hundreds of failures in the last ten sea-

November 4, 1947 139

sons had cagily safeguarded its chances through the inclu-
sion of any such tintinnabulum as figured in the hits above
noted.

There is still another variety of play that appears to be
born under a lucky star. That is the play which has a rail-
road train in it, particularly a railroad train crawling by
night across the backdrop. So far as memory serves, I can
recall only one play produced in many years, Fulton Of
Oak Falls, which had such a crawling train and yet foun-
dered. The successes generally would choke a chapter
equally with the bell plays. They have ranged from Bed-
ford's Hope to Forty-five Minutes From Broadway, from
The Ninety And Nine to The Fortune Hunter, and from
The Fast Mail to Life. Their number is legion. And just
as Fulton Of Oak Falls has been the only failure contain-
ing the spectacle of a miniature train crossing the rear
scenery, so if I am not mistaken have Casey Jones and
Heavenly Express been the only failures containing a lo-
comotive and/or train of more ample size. And in the case
of musical shows, the only fizzle that comes to mind is Or-
son Welles* Around The World. All sorts of others from
The Defender to Olsen and Johnson's Sons o' Fun have
been profitable. Even the plays that have shown the inside
of railway coaches seem for the most part to have been
prosperous. Reflect, for example, on all such as Excuse Me,
Twentieth Century., A Little Journey, etc. As to musicals,
the sole exception that occurs to me at the moment, aside
from the Welles show, was St, Louis Woman.

It all surely does not appear to make much sense, but it
is not sense that we are talking about. What we are talking
about is the show business. And since the show business is
probably more increasingly eccentric than anything else
under the sun, the authors may be warned that, though
ship bells have been good for the box-office in the past and
while they still possibly may be, it seems to be advisable
nowadays to keep the ship or boat scene itself out of a play
and to sound the bells from the wings. Again, please do not
ask me why, but in later years, aside from the revival of
Outward Bound, every new play, excepting only three,

140 For Love or Money

containing a ship or boat scene has lost money. To give
but a short list, I ask you to recall in this regard A Passen-
ger To Baliy False Dreams, Farewell, The Innocent Voy-
age, Lifeline, The Rugged Path, Wingless Victory, Sea
Dogs, Blow Ye Winds, A Ship Comes In, Western Waters,
How To Get Tough About It, The Gentle People, Be-
tween Two Worlds, Battleship Gertie, Hidden Horizon,
and This Time Tomorrow, among many others. The only
deviations from the rule were Excursion, Skipper Next To
God, and of course Mister Roberts. It may be otherwise
with musicals, at least in the case of a revival like Show
Boat though even that did not make any money in its
substantial New York run but it is hard to tell, since
Memphis Bound and various others proved to be duds.

To sum up, it might be a wise bet for any of the Holly-
wood hacks who have recently lost money on their plays to
fashion a script in which a bell prominently figures and in
which at one point or another an illuminated papier-
mache train moves by night across the backdrop. It prob-
ably will not matter much whether the play is good or bad.
Even if the critics dislike it, the public, if the records count
for anything, will prize it. Just to make doubly sure, how-
ever, let the hacks work in a scene in which a detective
closing in on his unaware prey leaves his tell-tale hat in
the room upon making a momentary exit. If the play in-
conceivably then should fail the hat business at least is,
as always, sure to get enthusiastic critical notices I shall
be prepared to- believe that I have wasted innumerable
years of theatrical experience and shall get busy at once in
instructing the hacks to convert the script into a certain
and resounding success by adding to it that character who
regularly enchants audiences: a genial drunk.

141

THE FIRST MRS. FRASER. NOVEMBER 5, 1947

A revival of the comedy by St. John Ervine. Produced by
Cant Gaither for 39 performances in the Shubert Theatre.

PHOCR AM

ALICE PHASER Emily Lawrence

NINIAN FRASER Lex Bichards

MABEL Hazel Jones

JAMES FRASER Henry DanieU

PHTTTP LOGAN Reginald Mason

MURIX> FRASER Kendall Clark

JANET FRASER Jane Cowl

ELSIE FRASER Frances TannehiU

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Late afternoon. Act II. Two weeks later. Act
in. Six months later. The action of the play takes place in Janet Eraser's
apartment in Knightsbridge* London. The time is the present.

Director: Harold Young.

M,

_R. ERVINE describes the heroine of his comedy as an
extremely attractive and appealing woman. While I have
few objections to the manner in which Miss Jane Cowl
plays her, I am nevertheless afraid that I do not react to
the role as I probably should under normal circumstances.
It is not my fault that I do not; it is Miss Cowl's. Shortly
before the play opened, she gave out a newspaper inter-
view. In the interview, she confided to the world I quote
literally that "I perspire like a fish-wife/' The horrified
interviewer, Mr. Rice, was about to exclaim, "Oh, no, Miss
Cowl, not that!" when she reaffirmed her statement. "Oh
yes, I do!" she emphasized. "This summer my peasant side
came out. I perspire like a fish-wife."

I tried professionally to forget it while reviewing the ac-
tress* impersonation of Ervine's supposedly captivating
heroine, but I couldn't. Instead of the charming and de-
sirable character the author had intended, what I kept vi-
sioning in my confusion was a creature damp with sweat,
and not very appetizing. If only, I said to myself, Miss
Ckwl had informed the interviewer that she perspired like,
say, a mint julep or even a Chihuahua's nose, it would not

142 The First Mrs. Fraser

have been so disturbing. But a fish-wife, no. I couldn't
take it.

There is not too much illusion left in the theatre as
things stand these days, and actresses of Miss Cowl's posi-
tion should not help to destroy what little remains. But
somehow a sufficient number of them seem bent on doing
that very thing. Doubtless under the impression that frank-
ness is both disarming and the mark of a winning person-
ality, they interview themselves out of all those romantic
qualities, however theoretical, which the theatre has a right
to expect of them and which it must sustain if it is to pros-
per. The Buses and the Ellen Terrys, the Maude Adamses
and the Ethel Barrymores and their counterparts have
served wisely in their ex-officio persons the theatre's main
business of cloud-borne fancy. They have not de-winged
the stage of its romance by expounding to reporters on
fallen arches and gallstones, on a taste for raw meat and
garlic, or on the excessive personal excretion of liquid by
their sudoriparous glands. Yet it is just such confidences
that some of our actresses, who should know better, now-
adays spread swinishly in the public prints. And with what
result? With the result that, unless the roles they appear in
are of a relevantly unpleasant nature, an audience has trou-
ble in accepting them for the women their playwrights
have sentimentally created. It is not easy, as audiences
have duly indicated, to read in the papers an actress* ad-
mission that she eats like a horse, has an awful time with
dandruff, and is never so comfortable as when she is slop-
ping around in an old Mother Hubbard and on that same
evening to visualize her as the object of a passionate and
overwhelming admiration on the combined part of a duke,
a poet, a one-time lover of Lily Langtry, and maybe even
a dramatic critic.

My colleagues have written that the Ervine comedy has
dated badly in the eighteen years which have passed since
its original production. They are right; it has. But it was
not less dated at the time of that production. Jts story of
the wife abandoned by her husband for another and*
younger woman, of his tiring of the latter, and of his con-

November 5, 1947 143

trite return to the old fireside had already then long since
been told in one form or another by numerous playwrights
like Maugham in England, Bahr in Austria, Capus in
France, Bracco in Italy, Buchanan in America, and yet oth-
ers. And their plays in turn were all familiar thematic ech-
oes of the very much earlier Sardou's Divorgons. Ervine's
characters, in addition, had already sprouted goatees when
his play first appeared. The vain Scot husband uncon-
scious of the value of his wife was seen to be Barrie's John
Shand. The understanding wife was, among two dozen
others*, Bahr's Mrs. Arany. The faithful old admirer of the
wife was Pinero's Cayley Drummle. And the Other Woman
shown up by the wife was, among four or five dozen oth-
ers', Eugene Walter's Eleanor Lathrop. The sense of Old
Home Week continued in the situations: the scene in
which the wife and other woman confront each other, the
one in which the returned husband displays his jealousy of
his former wife's admirer, the other one in which the wife
pretends that her humbled ex-spouse's protestations of
love are too late, etc.

Though the writing is here and there satisfactory, the
play suffers further and for the greater part from, first, its
author's indignation in certain directions and, secondly,
his rather cumbrous doses of sentimentality. An example
of the latter is the scene in the last act wherein the hus-
band wistfully allows that he is growing old and wherein
then the wife whom he is re-courting enters into a sweetly -
tristful monologue on the profound beauty of facial wrin-
kles and, generally, the wonderful visual improvements
wrought by age. The indignation in turn centers chiefly
and collaterally on the utter worthlessness of the young.
When it comes to youth, Ervine sees red. His ire is so in-
discriminate and consuming that he would in all likeli-
hood hiss June Lockhart off the stage, throw empty beer
bottles at Johnny Lujack, and believe that Love For Love
and The School For Scandal, written by Congreve and
Sheridan in their twenties, were stinkweeds compared with
The First Mrs. Fraser. There have been other dramatists
who have regarded the young of the species with some mis-

144 The First Mrs. Fraser

givings. But they have realized that indignation is the thief
of persuasion, not to say of sense, and have said their piece
with a convincing irony or a facetious charity. Ervine did
not learn and has not learned his lesson. After he has had
at youth for some time with hammer and tongs, there isn't
an octogenarian in his audience who doesn't feel like rush-
ing out of the theatre and giving a big hug to the first little
cutie he sees on the street, supplemented by a couple of
dollars to her kid brother.

Miss Cowl's performance, accompanied by her custom-
ary wealth of manual byplay which suggests the gestures of
accomplished acting less than the comportment of a fran-
tic deaf-mute, is a cross between the light comedy interpre-
tation of the role earlier offered by the matchless Marie
Tempest and the tenderly lugubrious interpretation sub-
sequently offered by Grace George. It is not always clearly
resolved, though the net effect serves the play well enough.
As the husband, Henry Daniell seems to be in some doubt
of the character until the later portions of his performance,
when he manages to get it in hand. His Scotch accent, how-
ever, only contributes further to my old discomfort when
within earshot of any such speech. I am, I must state, far
from prejudiced against many things Scottish. I am, in
fact, and long have been an admirer of Scotch whisky, but-
terscotch, Hazel Scott, Scot tissue, Scott Fitzgerald, hop-
scotch, Scotch terriers, Sir Walter Scott, Scotch woodcock,
Antonio Scotti, and the popular ditty, "My Man's Scot
Rhythm." My prejudice is simply against Scotch dialect on
the stage, and even then it has been inoperative in the face
of a play as good as A Highland Fling or a show as good as
Brigadoon. More often, however, it prevents me, and not,
I think, without cause, from cottoning to the kind of- play
or show in which the characters pronounce "did not" as if
they were Pullman porters announcing the evening meal,
"have" as if it were food for horses, and the other parts of
English speech as if seven out of every ten of its words were
spelled entirely with r's. Just why such Scotch, dialect is
supposed by authors and producers automatically to influ-
ence us to believe that its mouthpieces are lovable and

November 5, 1947 145

charming, or at least quaintly entertaining, I dinna ken.
When I, for one, have to listen for two hours to a lot of
characters talking as if their tongues were dentists' drills
encased in fur, I am even prepared to enjoy the prospect of
turning on the radio dial to Lew Lehr, God have mercy on
us all. It is for this reason that various plays which have
met with favor from others have failed in fascination where
I have been concerned. Bunty Pulls The Strings, which
everybody else seemed to admire, did not do a thing to me.
Neither did The Little Minister and some of Barrie's other
burr-mills. And so, also, with Beside The Bonnie Brier
Bush y Kitty MacKaye, etc. Maybe I need some scoto-
therapy.

Of the other members of the acting company, Reginald
Mason, with his experience in polite comedy, was far the
best.

Though the drawing-room setting by Charles Elson had
a reasonable look about it, the stage direction by Harold
Young was less drawing-room than pool-parlor.

146

EASTWARD IN EDEN. NOVEMBER 18, 1947

A play by Dorothy Gardner. Produced by Nancy Stern for
15 performances in the Royale Theatre.

PROGRAM

AUSTIN DICKINSON John O'Connor
LAVINIA DICKINSON

Beatrice Mariley

MAGGIE Kate Tomlinson

LUCY PLUM Barbara Ames

HELEN FISKE ( Hunt Jackson )

Emma Knox

SUSAN GILBERT Penelope Sack
GERRY HOOD Don Peters

BEN NEWTON Ernest Gaves

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. The Dickinson parlor, Amherst, eve-
ning, 1852. Scene 2. Pastor's church study, Philadelphia, 1854. Act II.
Scene 1. Same as Scene 1, Act I. Afternoon, several years later. Scene 2.
Same. December afternoon, a year later. Scene 3. Same, three days later.
Night. Scene 4. A cottage. Act III. Dickinson parlor, Amherst, Sunday
afternoon. Twenty years later.

Director: Etten van Volkenburg.

EMILY DICKINSON Beatrice Straight
EDWARD DICKINSON Edwin Jerome
DR. CHARLES WADSWORTH

Onslow Stevens

Miss SIMPSON Mary Jackson

MARTHA DICKINSON

Robin Humphrey
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

John D. Seymour

T

J-HE HERO of Brewster's Millions, you may recall, had
desperate difficulty in squandering a fortune within a stip-
ulated space of time. Had he consulted me, I might have
instructed him how to do it with the greatest of ease. All
he would have had to do was to invest it in a play about a
famous poet. When it came to plays about famous states-
men, soldiers, harlots, composers, kings, queens, or even
actors, he would, I might have counselled him, be taking
too big a chance, since altogether too many of them have
made rather than lost money. But the books show that he
could readily have solved his problem and gone happily
bankrupt by backing one about a celebrated rhymester. In
the last half -century or more, only two out of all the many
plays dealing with any such figure have turned a notice-
able profit at the box-office. One was Omar The Tent-

November IS, 1947 147

maker whose central character was Omar Khdyydm, and
that one succeeded mainly because of Guy Bates Post's las-
civious spouting of the popular illustrated drugstore cal-
endar's "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou," to say
nothing of on the score of what was advertised to the yokels
as "A stupendous, spectacular, daring production." The
other was The Barretts Of Wimpole Street, which took not
one but 2-poets-2 to put it over and which of course bene-
fited enormously from the presence of the popular favor-
ite, Katharine Cornell, as one of them.

All the rest that I can think of would have been right up
Brewster's alley. When he got through with them, he
would have been lucky if he had both his shoes left. There
was, for example, Bobby Burns and Robert Burns, which
lasted for just one performance. There were Poe and Ed-
gar Allan Poe, Plumes In The Dust, and The Raven.
There was the Bard of Avon in a number of bogies, among
them Will Shakespeare and Second Best Bed. There were
Keats and Aged 26, Chatterton and Come Of Age, Byron
and Bright Rebel, and also Villon in // / Were King, which
did not make any real money until tunes were added to it
and it became a musical comedy under the title, The Vaga-
bond King. And there were various others, all of which
would have driven Brewster to borrow a quarter for lunch.

Poets in the theatre, it appears, should be heard, not
seen. And even if they are merely heard and not seen, the
commercial results are not luxuriant, as Susan Glaspell
found out with her play about Emily Dickinson, Alison's
House, and as Martha Graham learned in another direc-
tion when she staged a talking ballet about the same poet-
ess. Emily in particular, indeed, has never fared too well
in, the theatre. Not only in the case of the two exhibits
mentioned did the Treasury Department's agents find it
unnecessary to hurry around and scrutinize the producers*
income tax returns, but another called Brittle Heaven, by
the Messrs. York and Pohl, was forced to cry quits after
only twenty-three performances.

Now comes still another Dickinson play and it, as well,
has turned out to be Brewster-bait. It is not that it is a

148 Eastward in Eden

wholly undeserving play; one or two things in it are com-
mendable. It is simply that, as with the other failures,
whatever they were like, it is apparently hard to interest
the paying public in a distinguished lute-strummer un-
known to nine-tenths of it and which, even if it had heard
of her, would still be considerably less interested in her
than in such of its great versifying pets as Robert W. Serv-
ice, Joyce Kilmer, and Edgar A. Guest. With a public, in
short, the majority of which on any radio quiz program
would lose its last chance at the Buick if asked to distin-
guish between Emily Dickinson and Babe Didrikson, any
such play has to stand or fall on its interest as one about a
largely fictitious character. And the fact appears to be that
most minnesingers, including Emily, whatever share of ro-
mantic quality they may have possessed, somehow do not
seem to be prehensile enough to be regarded apart from
themselves and to serve effectively as heroes or heroines of
fiction. Once you have named the exceptional Villon and
Byron, you will, I believe, be put to it to think of a poet
anywhere nearly as dramatically interesting as, say, Jeeter
Lester, Lightnin' Bill Jones, or even the Winslow boy.

The present offering has to do with the ill-starred love of
Emily and the Rev. Dr. Charles Wadsworth, a family man,
and of his highly moral retreat when he feels that things
may go too far. When, twenty years later, he returns, he
learns that her tender passion for him has never faded and
has found its release in verse which she has held close to
her bosom. It is commonly argued that such plays are too
literary, and hence not to the general public's taste. The
fact of course is rather that they are not literary enough.
They take a literary figure and, except for allowing him to
quote fragments from his works, by and large subject him
and particularly those around him to that routine econ-
omy of stage dialogue which often resembles literature in-
finitely less than it does an Author Meets The Critics ra-
dio program.

The play was scarcely helped by the performance of Bea-
trice Straight in the leading role. Miss Straight seemed to
have just two expressions: a wide-eyed smile to register the

November 18, 1947 149

character's spiritual rapture and a sudden erasure of it to
register an inner melancholy. And it was not only not
helped but devastated by a dream scene, introduced by
stereopticon clouds on a scrim curtain, which in the way of
wholesale sentimentality made Peter Ibbetson look in com-
parison like The Lower Depths. The whole was to be
summed up as a two and one-half hour sighing discourse
on the immortality vested in love between an actress archly
hopping and pit-a-patting around in a hoopskirt and an
actor in clerical garb standing apart and gazing at her ad-
miringly. And the evening was further intimidated by the
kind of stage direction which had the household maid in-
termittently flounce off the stage indignantly slapping her
apron, which made the sound of sleighbells identical with
that of the bell on the Dickinsons' front door, and which
caused the chief characters rapturously to fasten their eyes
on the windows leading to the garden every time they were
called upon to mention birds, flowers, the sun, the moon,
or the joy of living.

Donald Oenslager's period settings were basically good
examples of realistic designing but were contradicted by
mirrors conventionally soaped to eliminate the reflection
of stage lights, electric-logged fireplaces, pea-greenish Mae-
terlinck moonlight, and single candles that suddenly
flooded the stage with a powerful illumination. The play
itself in turn periodically violated its poetically spiritual
atmosphere with such Broadway dialogue stereotypes as
"You are in a strange mood today/' to say nothing of with
an audience's disturbing reflection that it was at bottom
little more than the old Hall Caine-Henry Arthur Jones-
Robert Hichens holy man-earthly woman materials attrib-
uted to a pair of factual persons and dressed up with chit-
chat about Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, and the Atlan-
tic Monthly.

Various additional things, Brewster might have been as-
sured, usually conspire against the success of such a play as
this Eastward In Eden. or any other kind which, like it and
regardless of quality, does not meet the prejudices of the
Four Horsemen of the contemporary American drama.

150 Eastward in Eden

These are, In order, Timeliness, Journalism, Cynicism,
and Laughs. The mounts are critics, and the quartet is in
large part responsible for much of the desolation in which
that drama is finding itself.

Consider the marauders in order. The first, Timeliness,
places a premium on the immediate chronological interest
of a play's theme. A touching example of the degree to
which the attitude goes was to be had in the New York
Critics' Circle's award for last year's best play to the negli-
gible All My Sons. The citation's most significant line read,
"Because of the frank and uncompromising presentation
of a timely and important theme." O'Neill's infinitely
more important and superior The Iceman Cometh was
dismissed by the awarders because, apparently, timeliness
is considered a greater dramatic asset than timelessness.
The O'Neill play deals with the spiritual needs of man-
kind unending; the Miller play with the corrupt war-time
sale of some defective airplane parts and the consequent
killing of a number of army fliers. It was therefore es-
teemed to be the finer specimen of dramatic art. If it was
not esteemed principally on that score, we must believe
that the awarding critics consider the novice Miller more
expert in dramaturgy than the O'Neill who, by the same
critics' paradoxical consent, is the foremost dramatist of
the American theatre; that, for all its freely admitted
faults, The Iceman Cometh is not more expert in character
drawing than a play whose chief figure owns a factory that
"looks like General Motors" yet who dresses, looks, acts
and talks like a foreman's helper and who lives in a cheap
little frame house with no servant to help his ailing wife
ran it; and that, because the O'Neill play consumes four
hours and is not as compact as the two and one-half hour
Miller play, the Miller play presumably for that reason is
ipso facto more admirable in artistic economy than even
the uncut four-hour Hamlet.

The veneration of timeliness is also clearly to be per-
ceived in the case of other recent plays and has been in-
strumental, at its most preposterous, in according high crit-
ical favor to such a paltry example of dramatic writing as

November 18, 1947 151

State Of The Union, which carries timeliness to the ex-
treme of altering nightly its references to the newspaper
political headlines. A glance at last season's exhibits offers
additional evidence of the tendency. Though On Whit-
man Avenue produced some critical qualms in other di-
rections, the timeliness of its theme injustice to the Ne-
gro met with almost unanimous critical endorsement.
In the same way, the opportuneness of the various themes
of A Flag Is Born, Temper The Wind, The Big Two, The
Whole World Over and other such poor plays was greeted
in the main with warm commendation, even if the plays
themselves here and there were greeted with less. The same
held true of experimental misfires like The Wanhope
Building, The Great Campaign, O f Daniel, et al. And Sar-
tre's The Flies got such notices partly because or its philo-
sophical identification with the moment as had not been
read locally since Watch On The Rhine similarly inflamed
the critical enthusiasm some half dozen years ago. In the
present season, plays like Skipper Next To God and The
Respectful Prostitute continued to emphasize the general
propensity.

All this, of course, is a consequence of the Second Horse-
man's journalistic attitude toward the drama. With minor
exception, the drama most often depends for its life and
livelihood not upon critics who view it as an art but upon
newspaper reviewers most of whom regard it perhaps
properly and correctly in the nature of their jobs
through what they imagine are the eyes of the majority of
their readers. It is these readers whose tastes they hope to
serve and those tastes, they please themselves to believe, are
primarily for passing entertainment or, at the highest, "se-
rious" drama with something of a "message." The message,
they further allow themselves to think, is best and most ac-
ceptable when it has to do with something in the imme-
diate minds of their readers and which has been lodged
there by the news of the day.

There have been and there are still the exceptional daily
reviewers who seek to operate on more independent and
loftier principles. But they are not the popular ones and

152 Eastward in Eden

their opinions are accepted mainly by the minority of their
readers who are biased in favor of drama of some repute.
And even they at times can not resist entirely the pull of
what they are shrewd enough to realize is reader appeal.
Compromise is accordingly not always beyond them. The
more popular reviewers, on the other hand, are those who
bear steadily in mind that the great majority of their read-
ers have no use for the finer drama, that they can not be
persuaded to attend it even if the reviewers endorse it, that
it is therefore the wiser course to accept the standards of
the majority, and that in doubtful cases it is best to side
with that majority's prejudices, real or imaginary. What all
this naturally leads to is the reviewers' either quick or grad-
ual surrender to the popular view of drama, again whether
real or imaginary, and their acquisition of pride in being
thus established as bell-cows of the larger share of the the-
atregoing public. The end-product of the attitude is the
public's acceptance of critical guidance which is no guid-
ance at all but simply an advance reassurance that its tastes
are what they properly should be. It is, in brief, a leader-
ship in reverse.

One of the fruits has been those tabulated critical scores,
published by theatrical publications like Variety and Bill-
board, which lay unction to the vanity of reviewers who
are nominated leaders by virtue of their having picked the
greatest number of box-office successes regardless of merit.
The pleased reviewers seemingly never stop to reflect that
the box-office hits would scarcely have become hits had
they themselves not helped them to become so. They do
not pick the hits, as the scores appear to show; by their
praise they make them hits. If their critical standards had
been worthier, they would not have endorsed many of the
plays and, lacking endorsement, the plays would in fair
chance have been failures. And the reviewers, consequently
far from being cocks of the Broadway walk, would be very
much sounder and more estimable critics, and the state of
the drama improved and elevated.

The play that boasts authentic quality thus often has

November 18, 1947 153

hard sledding, and the best that generally may be hoped
for is that the play which rests half-way between real qual-
ity and compromise will get by. In the usual run, we find
that plays which refuse compromise and, whatever their
place in the sun, make an honest effort in the direction of

dramatic worth, suffer at the hands of most of the review-

*

ers and are doomed. I offer, in example, a few such in the
last five or six seasons: The Beautiful People, Walk Into
My Parlor, Our Lan', Magic,, Hello Out There, Run, Lit-
tle Chillun, Outrageous Fortune, The Innocent Voyage,
South Pacific, A Highland Fling, Trio, The Overtons,
Dark Of The Moon, The Deep Mrs. Sykes, The Assassin,
A Sound Of Hunting, The Mermaids Singing, Lute Song,
The Fatal Weakness, As We Forgive Our Debtors, and The
Old Lady Says "No!"

An extension of the journalistic attitude toward the
drama may further be observed in the supreme Pulitzer
prize nonsense. The committee of newspaper editors who
bestow the annual award allowed at their 1947 meeting
that not only was O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh not to be
considered as worthy of any mention, but that neither it
nor any other play of the year was deserving of the great
honor that in previous years had been heartily conferred
upon such masterpieces of the dramatic art as The Old
Maid.

The Third Horseman, alias Cynicism, is the prime criti-
cal mountebank of the quartet. His adopted fury is senti-
ment. By nature soft as a fresh egg, he has persuaded
himself, with visible strain, that a stern opposition to senti-
ment of any kind, except possibly in musical shows, will
mark him out as a tough and superior mentality, not to
be tricked by that feminine thing called the heart. Give
him a play, however charming, that does not at least once
relieve its emotional and imaginative delicacy with the
ejaculation of a *'son-of-a-bitch" and he makes a critical
muscle. He is hardboiled, like little Lord Fauntleroy's
cuffs.

His hypocrisy works its damaging will upon various

154 Eastward in Eden

plays that deserve better. For example, one such as van
Druten's engaging comedy, The Mermaids Singing. The
theme, you may remember, had to do with a middle-aged
married playwright and an attractive young girl who ad-
mired him to the point of urging herself anatomically
upon him. His reluctance to enter into an affair with her,
despite strong temptation, because he well appreciated all
the nuisance and trouble it would get him into, constituted
the body of the play, which was thoroughly adult, sharply
perceptive, and witty. The Third Horseman, however,
rode into it lashing right and left on the ground that it was
altogether too sentimental in moral tone. Just where it
was too sentimental in any tone was difficult to make out.
Though it may have seemed so superficially, it was the ex-
act opposite. The hard sense and cold calculation of the
man in avoiding the sex relationship had about as much
sentiment as double entry bookkeeping. Yet the over-
Whelming fear of being considered sentimental led the re-
viewers to discern a moral tone in the man's abnegation.

What is here being written is plainly not intended as an
argument for the sentimental in drama. Far from it. The
argument is simply that where and when the sentiment is
sound, the blanket indictment of it on the part of postur-
ing critics becomes worse than ridiculous. And what is
equally ridiculous is the confusion of sentimental values
often found in these same critics. There is probably no
play of any quality essentially more sentimental than
Shaw's The Doctor's Dilemma. Yet though Shaw is at no
pains to conceal the fact, the play is digestible to the critics
on its author's general reputation, scarcely well-founded,
for cynicism. There is on the other hand probably no play
of any quality essentially more unsentimental than Saroy-
an's short Hello Out There. Yet, because Saroyan has the
general reputation for crying into his beer, it is decried in
various critical quarters for its alleged softness.

Sentiment seems somehow curiously to be associated in
such critics* minds with playwriting hacks or with spongy
dramatists like Barrie. Nor is it always a question of good

November 18, 1947 155

and bad writing, as those looking for an easy way out may
contend. Where a more shamelessly sentimental play than
the Swanwhite of the misanthrope Strindberg, than the
Hannele of the realist Hauptmann, or than the Peer Gynt
of the revolutionary Ibsen? Where, contrariwise, less senti-
mental and tougher plays than such hack works as The
Great Magoo, Maid In The Ozarks, and Catherine Was
Great?

The Fourth Horseman demands laughs above every-
thing. He can conceive of nothing as entertainment if it
does not succeed in causing him to open wide his mouth
and emit noises of an hyena volume. The art of the drama
to him is a succession of simiantics. He goes to the theatre,
he says firmly, to be amused, and he is evidently not to be
amused by anything that aims a bit higher than his belly.
He is to be recognized in several ways. "The play" what-
ever it is "is sadly lacking in comedy," he writes. "The
laughs are widely scattered/* he deplores. "The humor, so
far as it exists, is hardly robust," he complains. "There are
a few chuckles here and there," he allows, "but otherwise
a sad dearth of merriment." And so on. One of the few oc-
casions on which he permits himself an excursion into the
higher critical altitudes is in the instance of Shakespeare,
whose clowns, he pontificates, are no longer funny.

No one not completely an ass protests against laughter
in the theatre. But no one but a complete ass admires it to
the exclusion of almost everything else. The Fourth Horse-
man's admiration, furthermore, is critically indiscriminate.
Anything, so long as it unbuckles his cackles, is due for his
congratulations. There is small distinction between a Born
Yesterday on the one side and a Volpone on the other. He
is at once the interlocutor and end-man in his own critical
minstrel show. Wit, he seems to maintain, is for the cul-
turally snobbish; belly laughter is the ticket. And this
belly laughter is chiefly the kind that follows the misce-
genation of Billy Watson and the drama. We thus get from
him, when duly gratified, such frequent and familiar testi-
monials as I quote literally "A laugh riot/* "A

156 Eastward in Eden

edy smash," "A wow," "It brought the house down/' "The
roars shook the ceiling/' "One long, grand guffaw," "An
uproarious show/' "A hilarious ticket's worth/* etc.

So far does the prejudice in favor of laughs go that there
have actually been plays which have succeeded largely on
the score of a single thunderous midriff reaction. This has
been true since the evening, years ago, of Turn To The
Right, with its "Has anyone in this town got a hundred
and twenty-five dollars?", to Dark Eyes, with its Negro but-
ler's **I wish to seize this opportunity to thank you ladies for
the beautiful necktie you gave me/' and beyond. It was the
last minute insertion of the line, "She comes from one of
the first families of Pittsburgh as you enter the city/* that
partly saved the day for an old Channing Pollock show.
And in more recent years the old-time Fourth Horseman's
sons have indited extravagant praise of such dramatic clap-
trap as Brother Rat, What A Life!,, Junior Miss, Over 21
and the like simply, it is to be assumed, because the shod-
diness of the plays has been camouflaged with an occasional
similarly pleasing joke. Moreover, quality or no quality, it
is significant that a large proportion of the critically en-
dorsed successes in the last ten years have been the comedy
laugh shows: You Can't Take It With You, Yes, My Dar-
ling Daughter, Having Wonderful Time, Room Service,
Susan And God, Amphitryon 38, Bachelor Born, Kiss The
Boys Goodbye, The Primrose Path, Skylark, The Man
Who Came To Dinner, Life With Father, The Male Ani-
mal, George Washington Slept Here, the venerable Char-
ley's Aunt, and My Sister Eileen. Along with Arsenic And
Old Lace, Blithe Spirit, Janie, Kiss And Tell, Harvey, Dear
Ruth, O Mistress Mine, Born Yesterday, Happy Birthday,
Years Ago, John Loves Mary, Mister Roberts, the comedy
revivals like Burlesque, the Brother Rat, What A Life!,
Junior Miss and Over 21 earlier noted, etc., etc.

To repeat, unnecessarily: there is assuredly nothing to
be said against laughter as such. Even the slapstick and the
bladder have their virtues. Btit one prefers generally to be-
lieve with Victor Hugo that comedy, when mingled with
the drama, is better if it contains something of a lesson and

November 18, 1947 157

has something of a philosophy. If that be the highbrow at-
titude, it is still what the critical attitude should painfully
bear in mind. The comedy admired by the Fourth Horse-
man is a lesson in vaudeville and its philosophy that of a
circus clown.

158

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

NOVEMBER 26, 1947

A revival of the Shakespeare tragedy. Produced by Kath-
arine Cornell for 126 performances in the Martin Beck
Theatre.

PBOGRAM

PHILO Alan Shayne

AGRIPPA

David Orrick

DEMETOIUS Theodore Marcuse

POMPEY

Joseph Holland

ANTONY Godfrey Tearle

MENAS

Martin Kingsley

CLEOPATRA Katharine Cornell

VARRITJS

Ramet Biro

A MESSENGER David J. Stewart

VENTIDIUS

Bruce Gordon

DOLABELLA Robert Duke

OCTAVIA

Betty Low

PROCULEIUS Charlton Heston

CANB>IUS

Dayton Lummis

IRAS Maureen Stapleton

EROS

Douglass Watson

CHARMIAN LenoreUlric

Smus

Charles Nolte

AIJSXAS Oliver Cliff

THYREUS

Robert Carricart

BIOMEDES Eli WaUach

TAURUS

Gilbert Reade

ENOBARBUS Kent Smith

CALLUS

Rudolph Watson

MARDIAN Joseph Wiseman

SCARUS

Anthony RandaU

OCTA-VIUS CAESAR Ralph Clanton

EUPHRONIUS

Ernest Rowan

LEFIDUS Ivan Simpson

DERCETAS

Martin Kingsley

SYNOPSIS: Part I. The action takes place

in Egypt, Italy and

Syria. Part II. The action takes place in Greece and

Egypt.

Director: Guthrie McClintic.

V,

/ARIOUS SCHOLARLY and Impressive reasons have been
advanced for the hitherto consistent local failure of the
lustrous tragedy, but several simpler and possibly more
likely ones are often overlooked. The first of these is that
it is hard to believe that a public a substantial part of
which from adolescence has eccentrically visualized Cleo-
patra as a cross between the whore of Babylon and a dia-
thermic hoochie-coochie dancer is not disappointed in a
play which pictures her instead as a woman to whom love
and sex for the most part seem to be interesting chiefly as
subjects of conversation and whose expected voluptuous-
ness does not materialize even in speech. Furthermore, as

November 26, 1947 159

the late Granville Barker observed, her oral discourse
which undoes Antony Is far from passionate but drips with
sarcasm, wit and malice, which may be said to be scarcely
the public's idea of anything auspiciously aphrodisiacaL
Still further, imagine the public's sense of swindle when it
finds that what it has seen fit to look forward to as a siz-
zling wrestling match between an Egyptian Theda Bara
and a Roman Valentino turns out to be a confabular duet
between the two parties who, worse yet, as Barker properly
noticed, are never once during the whole play alone to-
gether; who embrace each other only two or three times,
and then with a largely verbal ardor; who meet at the be-
ginning of the play only to separate; and who on their re-
newed meeting are depressed out of any potential combus-
tion by the threat of immediate catastrophe.

Dissatisfaction with the play has been no less encouraged
by the stage depiction of Antony. The popular conception
of the latter, gained from statuary encountered on Cook's
Tours, from Shakespeare's own Julius Caesar, and in some
cases from Shaw's description in Caesar And Cleopatra, is
of a young man leaii, eager, strong, and brimful of loving
possibilities. In Antony And Cleopatra not only is he far
advanced in maturity and its collateral rueful declensions,
but he is too frequently cast with an actor who looks as if
he were just stopping off wearily in Egypt on his way to
the Old Actor's Home and whose only conceivable rela-
tions with Cleopatra could be paternal. It is not surprising,
therefore, that under the general circumstances the cus-
tomers should feel that the Nile becomes Nihil, its Serpent
Ambrose Bierce's toy snake with the shoe-button eyes, and
the fervor, such as it is, the calculated performance of a
Little Egypt, with anemia.

The feeling has been customarily further increased by
the actresses who have either cast themselves or been cast
as the anticipated sensuous and ravishing Queen. I have in
my time surveyed a quorum of the girls, and some of them
have provided strange spectacles. I have seen no less than
three on the Continent who looked so much like Queen
Wfihelinina of the Netherlands that the Antonys, of not

160 Antony and Cleopatra

noticeably less avoirdupois, had to approach their inamo-
rata sidewise. I have laid eyes on one or two otherwise esti-
mable English ladies who looked like their Antony's
mother and who seemed to be concerned not with his
libido but rather over their poor son's predicament with
his successive legal mates. And right here in God's country
I have it seems almost since childhood been edified
by a variety of Cleopatras ranging from Wallis to Walsh
and from Marlowe and Cowl to Bankhead who played the
Temptress as if she were either a Presbyterian lady- in-wait-
ing to herself or an Ilka Chase under the influence of Ann
Corio. And when it comes to Antony, I have since the early
vision of Robert B. Mantell simultaneously engaged such
a succession of beer-bellies and wobbly knees that I was at
times not sure whether I was looking at what is supposed
to be one of the world's greatest love stories or at a per-
formance of The Prince Of Pilsen,

But, together with all this, as if it were not enough, there
is still another reason for the play's usual lack of popular
success, at least in these more modern times. What with its
forty-two changes of scene ranging over the whole map of
the ancient period and covering some dozen years, it is
much too difficult for the average customer to follow, par-
ticularly since most of the different localities under the
new scenic dispensation, with its noncommittal blocks,
steps, platforms and curtains, look much alike and since it
is too dark in the theatre for him to distinguish between
them in his program, when and if they are listed, without
a flashlight. He has become so used to two- or three-act
plays laid in a single place and with curtain drops to indi-
cate the passing of only a few hours that one jumping fran-
tically from city to city, palace to galley, camp to battle-
field, and street to plain leaves him bewildered and dizzy.
And there remains, finally, the best reason of all, which is
that most of the original second and third acts is so anti-
climactically tedious that even the most devout of the
Bard's followers have trouble in keeping their ears awake.

Miss Cornell is consequently a brave actress to have un-
dertaken another revival of the hoodoo'd work. Considered

November %6 y 1947 161

apart from its possible financial success or financial failure
which is the only way becoming to criticism she has
mounted an unusually handsome and faithful production
and as its prehensile star has devised one of the most neatly
intelligent analyses of the part that I have encountered.
That she comprehends the role perfectly is clear. What
projecting weakness there is lies in those attributes known
to cliche criticism as "majesty" and "authority." Her mind
works shrewdly, but her vocal-physical presence frequently
contradicts it in the cross-picture of a gentle Candida and
a turbulent Dishonored Lady masquerading in Egyptian
robes. Godfrey Tearle's Antony, for a change, is, however,
an admirable one, both visually and in execution. The
rest of the troupe is of varying quality. Kent Smith, except
for a tendency to indulge himself in a set ballerina smile,
is a first-rate Enobarbus; Joseph Holland a properly ro-
bustious Pompey; Ivan Simpson an amusing Lepidus;
Ralph Clanton a booming stock-company Octavius; Le-
nore Ulric a negligible and affected Charmian; and Doug-
lass Watson a fair Eros.

The defect of the whole, well thought out though it is,
remains, as generally it does, in the great difficulty of fit-
ting Shakespeare's broad tapestry into stage walls in such
wise that it does not seem to wrinkle. For the wrinkles are
in the dramaturgical pattern itself and they destroy any
sense of compositional smoothness. Everything considered,
Guthrie McGlintic has done fairly well by the stage direc-
tion. Like Verdi's Un Ballo In Maschera, which similarly
has always had poor luck on the stage and which calls for
superlative direction to keep It alive, as Virgil Thomson
has emphasized, Antony And Cleopatra has need of some-
thing approaching directorial genius to give it flow and
pace where flow and pace are absent from its fabric. Mr.
McClintic has not entirely succeeded in the more than
merely difficult task, but he has managed a little better
than many of his predecessors. What he has missed is the
accomplishment of that hovering atmosphere of doomed
passion without which the dramatic panorama goes awry.
And what he also has failed in is the direction into com-

162 Antony and Cleopatra

plete articularity of some of the important speeches, not-
ably the magnificent and all-important opening one, de-
scribing Antony, in the mouth of Philo. There is, too, a
tendency to formalize the whole which on occasion robs
the spectacle of vitality. But, when we reflect on some of
the previous direction of the tragedy, his work yet takes on
a relatively rosy hue.

I am thinking in this connection of productions like the
one staged by Komisarjevsky in London a dozen years ago.
Compared with any such miscarriage, the present one
seems a veritable masterpiece of stage art. Not only did
the Russian indulge himself in such sanguinary mischiefs
as altering the play's opening and with only two sets mak-
ing utterly unidentifiable the locality of most of the scenes,
which brought the late James Agate to remark, "I am
afraid this production is one of those cases in which what
is wanted is a little less imagination and a few more scene-
shifters'* not only did Komisarjevsky disport himself
thus, but he caused Antony in death so convalescently to
shout his farewell that the audience thought for a moment
he was about to jump up from his prostrate position and
begin the play all over again. There was also the little mat-
ter of Madame Leontovich in the Cleopatra role who, with
her Russian accent lost upon her fellow-Russian director,
brought down the house by reading speeches like "When
you sued staying, Then was the time for words" as "Wen
you suet staying, Den was de time for wurst," which led
Agate to inquire, "What had English tallow and German
sausage to do with this Egyptian passion?"

The Cornell presentation's stage settings by Leo Kerz
and the men's costumes by John Boyt are deserving of
special notice.

163

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
DECEMBER 2, 1947

A play by Tennessee Williams. Produced by Irene M. Selz-
nick for the rest of the season's performances in the Ethel
Barrymore Theatre.

PROGEAM

NEGRO WOMAN Gee Gee James
EUNICE HUBBEL Peg H&tias

STANLEY KOWALSKI

Marlon Brando
HABOLD MITCHELL
STELLA. KOWALSKC
STEVE HUBBEL

Karl Maiden
Kim Hunter
Rudy Bond
HABITUES or

BLANCHE Du Bois Jessica Tandy
PABLO GONZALES Nick Dennis

A YOUNG COLLECTOR Vtio Christi
MEXICAN WOMAN Edna Thomas
A STRANGE WOMAN Ann Dere
A STRANGE MAN Richard Garrick

THE QUARTER

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place during the spring,,
summer and early faU m New Orleans.
Director: Elia Kazan.

T

AHE.I

:.PLAY, which might well have been titled The Glans
Menagerie, has been criticized in some quarters as an un-
pleasant one. The criticism is pointed. But the fact that a
play is unpleasant, needless to say, is not necessarily a re-
flection on its quality. Oedipus, Lear, and The Lower
Depths, to name only three out of many, are surely very
far from pleasant, yet it is their unpleasantness which at
least in part makes them what they are. There is a consid-
erable difference between the unpleasant and the disgust-
ing, which is the designation Mr. Williams* critics prob-
ably have in mind, and his play is not disgusting, as, for
example, is scum like Maid In The Ozarks and School For
Brides. The borderline between the unpleasant and the
disgusting is, however, a shadowy one, as inferior play-
wrights have at times found out to their surprise and grief.
Williams has managed to keep his play wholly in hand. But
there is, too, a much more positive borderline between the
unpleasant and the enlightening, and he has tripped over

164 A Streetcar Named Desire

it, badly. While he has succeeded in making realistically
dramatic such elements as sexual abnormality, harlotry,
perversion, venality, rape, and lunacy, he has scarcely con-
trived to distil from them any elevation and purge. His
play as a consequence remains largely a theatrical shocker
which, while it may shock the emotions of its audience,
does not in the slightest shock them into any spiritual
education.

Eight years ago, at the beginning of his career, Williams
wrote a play called Battle Of Angels, which closed in Bos-
ton after a brief showing. It hinted at his preoccupation
with sex in its more violent aspects, which continues in the
present exhibit. It also, while not nearly so able a play,
betrayed his apparent conviction that theatrical sensation-
alism and dramatic substantiality are much the same thing
and that, as in the present case, one can handily pass the
former off for the latter, and for something pretty artistic
into the bargain, by gilding it with occasional literary
flourishes accompanied by off-stage vibra-harps, flutes, and
music boxes. The hanky-panky may work with a suscepti-
ble public, but not with the more ingressive criticism.
There is a considerable difference between Wedekind and
Wedekindergarten. To fashion any such festering materi-
als into important drama it is essential that they be lifted
out of life into a pattern larger than life, as, among others,
Strindberg and his contemporary disciple, O'Neill, have
appreciated, Williams in considerable part leaves them
where he found them and deludes himself into a belief
that he has made of the gutter a broad sea by now and
then sailing in it little papier-mache poesy boats, propelled
by doughty exhalations.

Impressionistically, the play suggests a wayward bus oc-
cupied by John Steinbeck, William Faulkner and James
Cain, all tipsy and all telling stories simultaneously, and
with Williams, cocking his ear to assimilate the goings-on,
as the conductor. Critically, it suggests that he is a little
deaf and has not been able to disentangle what may be
valid from the bedlam and assimilate it to possibly meri-
torious ends. Theatrically and popularly, however, the

re-

December 2, 1947 165

suit will surely Impress a lot of people, even such as will
pretend for appearances' sake to be offended by what they
allude to as its "strong meat" and who after seeing it will
profess that they long for a breath of fresh, good, clean
glue.

Like a number of his contemporaries, Williams seems to
labor under the misapprehension that strong emotions are
best to be expressed strongly only through what may deli-
cately be termed strong language. I am not, you may be
relieved to know, going to take up again the already over-
argued question as to whether such language has any lit-
erary justification. I am as tired of the discussion as un-
doubtedly you are. But, justified or not in certain cases, it
seems to me that in this specific instance he has at times
used It not because it is vitally necessary but for purposes
of startle and because his dramatic gifts do not yet include
the ability to achieve the desired effect without easy re-
course to such terminology. His writing to fall back on
a description I have used before sometimes sounds alto-
gether too much like a little boy proudly making a muscle.

The play centers on a Southern school-teacher whose
youthful marriage ended in tragedy when her homosexual
husband committed suicide, who has vainly sought ne-
penthe in miscellaneous sex, and who has become an in-
curable neurotic with delusions of grandeur. It develops
her amatory life with her sister's husband and with the lat-
ter *s crony. And It ends with her mental disintegration and
deposit in an asylum. That it holds one's Interest is not to
be denied, But it holds It much as it is perversely held by
a recognizably fixed prize-fight or a circus performer pro-
jected out of what appears to be a booming cannon by a
mechanical spring device. It is, in other words, highly suc-
cessful theatre and highly successful showmanship, but
considerably less than that as critically secure drama.

In this general view of the play, I hope that no one will
suspect that I am subscribing to such definitions as Je-
rome's "Ugliness Is but skin-deep; the business of Art is to
reveal the beauty underlying all things." Such sweet sen-
timents, though generally accepted as true, are much too

166 A Streetcar Named Desire

broad and sometimes faulty. The revelation of fundamen-
tal ugliness and depravity has been known to be not only
the business of art but even occasionally its triumph. The
form and style and manner of the revelation may be beau-
tiful, but the revelation itself is not. A better definition
might be that the business of art is to reveal whatever is
basically true, whether beautiful or ugly, in terms of the
highest aesthetic competence. The ugliness in Williams*
play may in the definition of the Jeromes be only skin-
deep, but the ability to prick deeper into it and draw from
it the blood drops of common humanity, and in them a
true count of dramatic art, is absent. It scarcely throws one
off critical scent to quote in the program verse, by Hart
Crane, about "the broken world," "the visionary company
of love," and "its voice an instant in the world." It is not
enough to substitute the ingenious stage magic of lights
and music for the equally seductive but more definitely
powerful magic of poetry. For what still mutinously forces
itself upon one in this tale of a prostitute who would en-
velop hideous reality in the anodyne of illusion and sup-
plant the world of pursuing lust with one of pure love is,
save in a few valid scenes, the impression of a Pirandello
theme dramatized by a hopeful aspirant to dramatic lyri-
cism and which periodically and I am not being as fa-,
cetious as you may think converts its characters into
rampaging approximations to Harpo Marx.

Contributing greatly to the external successful aspects o
the play are admirable direction by Elia Kazan and a uni-
formly excellent acting company in which, supported by
Marlon Brando, Karl Maiden and the rest, Jessica Tandy
in the role of Forever Streetcar gives one of the finest per-
formances observed locally in several seasons. Also helpful
is Jo Mielziner's variant of his scenic design for the same
author's The Glass Menagerie^ though one may wonder
how he reconciles an acutely realistic lavatory with the rest
of his fancifully imagined and dreamlike interior of a
dwelling in the Vieux Carr&

167

TRIAL BY FIRE. DECEMBER 4, 1947

A documentary play by George H. Dunne. Produced by
the Blackfriars' Guild for 16 performances in the Black-
friars' Guild Theatre.

CAST

Marc Snow, Will Marshall, Paula Mayer, Thomas Roberts. Charlotte
Nachtwey, Clarence Rock, Charlynn Wright, Valerie CaveD, John Flower,
John Young, Evelio Grillo, Nappy Whiting, Tom O'Connor, Walter
Thompson, Helena Price, and John Michael
Director: Albert McCleery.

ATHER DUNNE, S.J., has based his episodic play, a pro-
test against racial intolerance, on an actual case involving
the death o a Negro family in a fire which devastated their
home in southern California. Using the court records, he
presents them quite as literally as Dreiser did in An Amer-
ican Tragedy. The effect at odd moments is what he hoped
for, but the play covers ground already often thrashed in
the theatre and hence overly familiar and it is further
weakened by elementary dramaturgy that fails to discrim-
inate between the necessary and the needless, which latter
predominates. In brief, as the cliche goes, a sincere effort,
but sincerity, as the clich( also goes, is scarcely in itself
enough to foster merit in otherwise limited dramatic
competence.

168

CARIBBEAN CARNIVAL. DECEMBER 5, 1947

A calypso musical revue by Adolph Thenstead and Samuel
L. Manning. Produced by Adolph Thenstead for n per-
formances in the International Theatre.

PRINCIPALS

Pearl Primus, Josephine Premice, Claude Marchant, Pamek Ward, Alex
Young, Charles Queenan, the Duke of Iron, the Smith Kids, Curtis James,
Peggy Watson, Padjet Fredericks, Fred Thomas, the Trio Cubana, Eloise
Hill, Dorothy Graham, and the Caribbean Calypso baud.
Director: Samuel L. Manning.

OVERUSED AS "the first calypso musical ever presented,"
the show, like the Caribbean island entertainments in gen-
eral, has a deal of life in it, but the life is all of an aimless
piece, as is that in a puppy or rubber ball, and, though live-
liness there unquestionably is, it consequently seems to be
static and to revolve 'round and 'round in the same circle,
like a squirrel in a rotating cage. The native dances are
doubtless authentic, but since most of them seem to consist
in impassioned efforts simultaneously to dislodge the sacro-
iliac and rupture the genital parts and since the dusky la-
dies and gentlemen who are the parties thereto proudly
display what after all look like everybody else's navels, the
evening scarcely progresses. Especially and further since
the background for most of the dances presents the usual
lopsided palm trees and smear of blue sea and since stand-
ing in front of the painted canvas are the customary black
girls with their shirts coyly dropped off their left shoulders
and balancing either tall jars or flower-pots on their heads.
The calypso rhythms and jungle drums, like ice-skating
shows and novels about Nell Gwynn, after a short time also
become so monotonous that one finds one's mind wander-
ing. In my case, it began to wander so far afield before the
show was three-quarters of an hour old that it never came
back to the stage proceedings. In view of which uncritical

December 5, 1947 169

fact, there Is nothing I can do to give you a fuller account
of what went on and will mortify myself, and probably
you, by offering some samples of my mental peregrinations.

While the gentleman who calls himself the Duke of
Iron had at me with a series of calypso songs that all
sounded exactly alike, I was waywardly thinking that one
of the most impressive differences between American and
English sex comedy is that in the former the hero and hero-
ine finally go to bed together, sentimentally, and that in
the latter the hero avoids it, wittily.

"While Claude Marchant and the dancers were executing
one of the routine voodoo numbers, I meditated that it is
a weakness of the great majority of modern comedies that
their endings are too neatly resolved and tied up with pink
ribbons. Life and the better comedies, I said to myself, are
not like that, as everyone except the playwrights seems to
be aware. Life has a way o leaving things unravelled, and
the more observant comedy writers have that way as well,
as, among others, Schnitzler has attested in Anatol, Henry
Arthur Jones in The Case Of Rebellious Susan, Brieux in
The Incubus, and Molnar in The Guardsman. Most play-
wrights may be obliquely reminded that there remains a
possibly greater virtue in Schubert's Unfinished Symphony
than in the completed score of Toplitzky Of Notre Dame,
in the unfinished Faust of Goethe than in the fully
rounded / Gotta Get Out of Joe Fields, and maybe in even
Dickens* uncompleted The Mystery Of Edwin Drood than
in the exactly ravelled Duet For Two Hands of Mary Hay-
ley Bell.

While Pearl Primus was remorselessly chasing her navel
back and forth on the stage, I wondered why those of our
producers who are fetched by propaganda plays and who
usually pick out the kind that make a soapbox blush for
itself are not aware of one, and a very good one with a
likely contemporary slant, written more than four hun-
dred years before the birth of Christ by a fellow named
Aristophanes. Its title: The Acharnians. Its plot: A good-
natured countryman is driven from his village home by en-
emy invasion. Though a peace to end the war is possible,

170 Caribbean Carnival

his government dallies for so long over details that he gets
good and sick of the delay and in disgust dispatches a per-
sonal messenger to the enemy to effect a separate peace for
himself and his family. The messenger is successful; the
enemy government pleasedly sends him back with lots of
booze for a mutual ratification of the truce; and the old
boy gets a magnificent celebrating edge on and rosily re-
turns to his home just in time to participate in the feast
of Bacchus.

While the so-called Smith Kids, boy and girl, were in-
dulging in familiar island ditties, the alcoholic attributes
of the aforesaid feast turned my thoughts to speculating on
the advance that our theatre has managed in at least one
respect. No longer as in past days, I reflected, is stage direc-
tion in plays of fantasy of the bogusly imaginative kind
which sought to top fancy with fancy by making the actors
behave as if they had been out on a six-day binge with
Maeterlinck and were still in the hangover state where
they were not sure whether they were themselves or Pease-
blossom. The alcoholic metaphor similarly and gratifyingly
no longer includes the sort of staging which the war-ref-
ugee Russian and German directors were fond of visiting
upon certain specimens of their native dramatic art. It was
their idea, as will be painfully recalled, that authentic dra-
matic stylization was to be accomplished simply by placing
upon a platform a pair of large screens that looked as if
they had been up all night drinking, were in the incipient
stages of delirium tremens, and were about to fall under
the table, and by inserting between them groups of actors
instructed to comport themselves as if they were seized al-
ternately by attacks of epilepsy and paralysis. Even had the
plays themselves been half-way acceptable, their effect
would still have been demolished by the directors' trans-
mutation of the characters into actors so hammy that one
could not stifle one's chuckles on beholding them popping
out their eyes like Peter Lorre, gesticulating like so many
French traffic cops, leaping and bounding about the stage
like the late Lew Morrison's Mephistopheles, and then

December 5, 1947 171

suddenly relapsing Into a semblance of Nance O'Neil rigor
mortis.

While the jungle drums were dumdumming and the
dancers once again enthusiastically running after their
navels, it occurred to me that among the most intolerable
dramatic actors are those elocutionary relics from another
era who indulge themselves throughout a play rolling dice
with their voices.

While Josephine Premice was calypsoing herself blue in
the face, I evolved this definition: Dramatic criticism is the
craft of superimposing a critic's logical prejudices on the
emotional prejudices of a dramatist.

While Miss Primus was again voodooing her umbilicus,
I thought that the theatre in its character of a mere pur-
veyor of amusement sometimes profits very much more
from bad acting than good. A play so dreadful in every par-
ticular that its entertainment quotient is nil may occasion-
ally be made the stuff of considerable jollity by acting
even more atrocious than the play itself. Where good act-
ing would only point up its awfulness, really terrible act*
ing contributes a measure of hilarity to it. Some of the
most thoroughly amusing evenings I have spent in the the-
atre have been at bad plays even worse acted. For example,
The Love Call, Boudoir, House Of Doom, A Strange Play,
They Walk Alone, Brother Cain, and, by all means, Cur-
tain Call, with the memorable performance by Guido
Nadzo. The operators of the old river showboats, of the
tank-town Tom companies, and, later, of such travestied
melodramas as The Drunkard weren't fools. They knew
that the money of customers who howl with mirth at mor-
biferous acting is just as good as that of customers who find
satisfaction in only the better grade.

While still more calypso was lulling my brain, my
thoughts turned to the writing racket as it currently oper-
ates in the land. The writing racket, I mused, is one of the
nation's most fruitful confidence games. For every compe-
tent and honest writer there are at least twenty or thirty
who, by substituting pen, paper and ink for the more

172 Caribbean Carnival

obvious three shells, swindle the public into providing
them with a fancy living. The moment one comes upon a
scribbler, let us say, who in seeming doubt writes, "Was it
not So-and-so who once said so-and-so?/ r one should switch
one's watch to another pocket. The writer knows perfectly
well that it was So-and-so who said it, since one may be
sure that he looked it up, and his implication of lack of
certainty is intended to suggest that his head is so full of all
the scholars in the world who may possibly have said some-
thing faintly similar that he can not at the moment for the
life of him unravel his enormous store of recollection and
knowledge.

The quote boys, most of whom belong to the was-it-not
mob and chief of whom are critics of one sort or another,
have also long been in the soft money. Their especial pitch
is saying nothing, or at best very little, on their own, and
bequeathing to themselves a handsome air by promiscu-
ously hijacking the wit and wisdom of others, always cau-
tiously selecting their multiple victims from the deceased
lest there be yelps from their cabbaged contemporaries.
One may spot the general nature of their little game in
something that goes like this:

"Georg Brandes remarked of Wagner, 'His music has the
quality of incandescent thunder/ I thought of this as I lis-
tened last night to Siegfried, of which Huneker wrote, Its
length may be likened to two miles of unsalted pretzels.*
As I sat there, there occurred to me, appraising the opera,
the words of Swinburne: 'The sounds of the sea in tumult
swirl about one like melted cannons/ And was it not Bru-
netiere, or was it Matthew Arnold? it might, indeed,
even have been Louis XIV who said, 'Art is most nega-
tive when it is most positive/ Nonetheless, the performance
of Siegfried, though it might slightly have ruffled the aes-
thetic sensibilities of Racine, who allowed that 'the defects
of opera are not always the defects of virtue/ would, it is
likely, have met with the approbation of Kotzebue, who
once observed, 'I am always, I notice, pleased by what
pleases me/ "

Then there are what may be designated the reader chis-

December 5, 1947 173

elers. Their fetch is the ingratiation o themselves with
their customers by implying that the latter are already
privy to all that is recondite in the world, and on easy and
off-hand terms with it. If they are not flattering their read-
ers with "as you must [never "may"] surely recall" or "as
you certainly are already wholly aware/' they are in oper-
ation with the "as you need not be tolds," "as you will read-
ily recognizes/' and "to repeat what you probably are al-
ready fully familiar withs."

Close at the heels of such come the heavy modesty and
the foreign-word sharpers. The heavy modesty boys are
even easier to identify than the foreign-word swindlers.
Their technique consists in a foxy depreciation of them-
selves in the hope of making the reader cotton to them the
more greatly and thus, by putting him off his guard, make
the fleecing of him a simple matter. Their literature teems
with such phrases as "your humble scribe," "your would-
be guide/* and "your ink-stained wretch." Periodically it
embraces such wiles as "if I may take the liberty/' "you
will, I hope, pardon me if I venture timidly to suggest,"
"if I do not again, alas, fall into error/' and "without the
slightest desire to foist my dubious opinions upon you."
Nor does it craftily overlook a liberal injection of the edi-
torial "we," an intermittent squirt of "my readers, if any,"
and a sufficient embroidery of "these dim eyes/* "this shak-
ing hand," "these old bones," and "this fast-failing mem-
ory."

In the foreign-word aggregation are to be found the
lesser variety of college professors and others who know no
language but English, and little of that. The members
never under any circumstance condescend to write simply
glow, junction^ or spirit, say, but always and invariably
elan, rapprochement, and esprit. And that is just the be-
ginning. Mirabile dictu, affaire, raconteur, imprimis, qui
-owe, tout le mond and pourboire are all over the sheet
giving things a tone. And so, instead of good, plain
English are Dei gratia, beau ideal, cacoethes scri-
bendi, en rapport, fin de siecle, and ftlle de joie, to say
nothing of good old simpatico, coup de grace, mise en

174 Caribbean Carnival

scene, Sklavenmoral, Homo sapiens, idee fixe, amour
propre, femme fatale, vieux jeu, ancien regime, enfant
terrible, etc.

Next in the line-up are the descriptive atmosphere con-
fidence men. It should take the prospective victim only
a moment to recognize them, since they generally give
themselves away in the very first paragraph. If a gray mist
isn't spread like a ghostly blanket over the bleak moor, the
sun is setting like a ball of crimson fire over the rippling
bay, and if neither the gray mist nor the ball of fire are in
operation the elms bordering the village street are droop-
ing in the late, silent twilight or the great house is standing
lonely on the far hill like a forsaken, blinking owl. For
the victim somewhat slower in catching on to the ways
of the racketeers, there are a sufficient number of other
clues, the chief of the give-aways being their inability to
mention anything whether a two-by-four room, a minor
fall of rain, or even a one-horse-town drugstore with-
out elaborately atmosphering it up with a Sears-Roebuck
catalogue, a second-hand dose of Joseph Conrad, or the
report of a half dozen motion picture location scouts. If it
is the two-by-four room that occupies them, they are ready
with a realistic, minute description of every last thing in
it, from the wallpaper to the small crack in the ceiling and
from the board in the floor, just one inch from the pine
door painted pale blue, that creaks to the other board in
the floor* just two inches from the door painted pale green
leading to the bedroom, which is papered in pale red,
that also creaks. And so from the slight drizzle of rain,
which atmospherically wets up at least four pages, to the
hick drugstore, which usually technicolors up six or seven
all the story's characters apparently meanwhile being
off on vacations in Atlantic City and which seems to be
as peculiarly full of detail (the word lt microcosm" comes
in here) as the biggest department store in New York or
Chicago.

The simile boys sometimes operate independently but
more often work with the atmosphere mob. With them,
everything is like something. Not simply like something,

December 5, 1947 175

but very fancily like something. Thus, a girl's hair is
never, say, like taffy; it is like melted amber flowing softly
over her shoulders like a gentle Springtime cascade. Nor
are a man's eyes just like cold steel; they are like twin
rapiers piercing everything they meet with steely, wound-
ing ripostes.

The rhythm freebooters frequently work the same side
of the street. With only a little "and" up their sleeves, they
have been sailing big for years, ever, indeed, since Richard
Harding Davis showed them the way to turn it into wist-
ful money. Where someone else, Heaven forbid, might
write: "Over there on the far horizon lies the island of
Santa Luciano, its palms swaying under the tropical stars;
those lights you dimly see are the harbor lights of Bla-
nafia; the waves of the Caribbean wash the sandy beaches;
the moon bathes the coral coast; the trade winds ruffle the
wildflowers into a warm perfume" where, as I say,
someone else might, again Heaven forbid, put it that way,
the rhythm boys sell the reader by turning on the "and"
phonograph: "And over there on the far horizon and
where lies the island of Santa Luciano and its palms sway-
ing under the tropical stars, those lights you dimly see are
the harbor lights of Blanana, and there the waves of the
Caribbean wash the sandy beaches and the moon bathes
the coral coast and the trade winds ruffle the wildflowers
into a warm perfume."

There are, as well, the taste gentlemen, whose especial
racket consists in trying to win the reader by insulting
him. This is known in the trade as the akamarakus of at-
traction by repulsion. To the taste gentlemen, the taste of
everybody else is something terrible. It stinks. So right
from the shoulder they tell them. Their taste is low. They
are bourgeois. They are peasants. They are clods. They
should learn. Otherwise, God help the artistic future of
America! The boys are out to save Culture from the rab-
ble, the canaille, the riff-raff and the rag-tag-and-bobtail
at the noble self-sacrifice of twenty cents a word.

And, finally, there are the grifters whose racket is what
passes for so-called "tough mug*' lingo. In harrowing ex-

176 Caribbean Carnival

ample, a specimen of the kind of telephone conversation
which their characters merchant:

"Is zat youse, Jallapalooza?"

"Yeah, it's me, brother; is zat you, big boy?"

"Yeah, it's big boy himself in poisen. Whatya doin* to-
night, bitcherino?"

"Nuttin', big boy; what's boilin*?"

"You said it, babe; meet me to th' corner of Broa'way and
Fifty-foist at seven."

"O.K."

"o,K.r

"O.K."

And the calypsoing and navel heavings still went on.

177

GALILEO. DECEMBER 7, 1947

A biographical play by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Charles
Laughton, with incidental music by Hanns Eisler. Pro-
duced by the Experimental Theatre, Inc., for 6 perfor-
mances in the Maxine Elliott Theatre.

PROGRAM

CURTAIN BOY
GALILEO
ANDREA
SARTI

LUDOVICO
PRIULI

SAGREDO
VIRGINIA
FEDERZONI
SENATOR I
SENATOR II
PRINCE

Allen Martin
Charles Laughton
Michael Citro
Hester Sondergaard
Philip Swander
Fred Stewart
JohnStraub
Joan McCracken
Dtvight MarfieJd
Sidney Bossier
Frank CampaneEa
Lam/ Rosen
Thomas Palmer
Harry Hess

PHILOSOPHER
LORD CHAMBERLAIN
ELDERLY LADY

Mary Grace Canfield
A SCHOLAR Frank Campanefla

A MONK Leonard Bell

INFURIATED MONK

Werner Klemperer
OLD CARDINAL Wesley Addy

SUPPORTING MONK Pitt Herbert
LITTLE MONK Don Hanmer

CLAVIUS Taylor Graves

BELLARMIN Lawrence Ryle

BARBARINI Rusty Lane

lN<2UisrroK John Camdine

ANDREA NehemiahPersoff

CUISEPPI Donald Symington

BAT.T.ADE SINGER Harris Brown
BALLADE SINGER'S WIFE

Elizabeth Moore
BALLADE SINGER'S DAUGHTER

Ins Mann

A MONK Sidney Bossier

DUKE or FLORENCE

Earl Montgomery* Jr.
INFORMER Warren Stevens

MAXEC Ph&p Robinson

SACRISTAN I Tayior Graces

SACRISTAN H Leonardo Cm&no
TOWN CRIER PM&p&nbmson

SYNOPSIS: Act L Scene 1. GtMeos stody, Padua, 1609. Seme 2.
The great arsenal of Venice. Scene 3. GaBteo's study. J&miary 10, 1610.
Scene 4. GcMeo's new house, Florence* Scene 5. The Coflegfrtm Ro-
manum, Rome. 1616. Scene 6. Cardinal TZetfowmns pdace, Rome. Scene
7. Garden of the Jflorer&ine AzMbassador, Rome. Act LL Scene 8. Gal&eo's
house, Florence. 1623. Scene 9. The market $ace of a smatt town in It-
aly. AH Fools Day. 1682. Scene 10. The Medicean palace, Florence. Scene
11. The Vatican. 16S3. Scene 12. Garden of the Florentine Ambassador,
Rome. Scene 13. A country house near Florence. 1637.

Director: Joseph Losey.

178 Galileo

T

J.HI

J.HE EXPERIMENTAL THEATRE, so-called, got its second
season under way with a play that had already been shown
on the West Coast without any tokens of experimental
or critical acclaim, and understandably, since it is a
heavily contrived and dramatically static chronicle of the
life and tribulations of the celebrated physicist entirely
lacking in any distinction. That it was chosen simply be-
cause Charles Laughton was willing to come east to act in
it is, I fear, the only explanation. There was some severe
criticism of the local organization for thus casting the play
with an actor who has made a box-office name for himself
in the moving pictures, as there was for casting another
such picture name, John Garfield, in the next forthcoming
production. As for myself, I can think of nothing less de-
serving of critical attack than any such hazardous experi-
ment of determining whether former actors who have
gone to Hollywood can still do anything remotely ap-
proaching acting on the dramatic stage. At the same time,
however, it does not escape me that there is a suspicious
box-office flavor to any experimental enterprise that takes
cautious refuge in such luring marquee film lights.

Though, as noted, there may be some experimental
value in gambling on the possibly remaining competences
of one-time stage actors who for years have been antick-
ing before the cameras, it is difficult to make out any ex-
perimental value whatever in the Brecht play. Similar
plays, and much better ones, have been produced in the
Broadway theatre, and the productions of them also have
often been much better. I sometimes wonder, indeed, at
most of this experimental business as it has been con-
ducted in these parts. It too frequently seems to be the
idea of the experimenters that any play is a worthy ex-
perimental item if only no professional producer has been
willing to put it on. It similarly seems too frequently to
be their idea that because no such producer has seen fit to
put it on it is therefore something that must be possessed
of a strange and hidden merit. And if such a play, which

December 7, 1947 179

should properly be staged in a more or less conventional
manner, offers an opportunity to piscator it almost out of
recognition with lantern slides, loud speakers, off-stage
juke-boxes and topsy-turvy scenery, they grow delirious
with delight.

Much of the local experimental undertaking in the last
twenty or more years is an after-growth of the arrival on
these shores of refugee producers and directors from the
wars, both I and II. A few of these Central Europeans
and Russians were men of imagination and talent, if some-
times too greatly given to freakishness of a wild and woolly
order. But many more were second-raters without any
real ability who attempted to conceal their lack of it in
an approach to the stage that was even wilder and woollier
and which was incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant to
the plays upon which they imposed it. Yet their influence
on local youth in the small, off-Broadway theatres was
marked, and though that youth advanced in years and
percolated into the larger theatres it unfortunately did
not advance in any discrimination between what might
conceivably be valid in the foreign staging and what was
unmistakably fraudulent and silly. As a consequence, we
were confronted from time to time by imitations of these
alien charlatans which not only grieved the judicious but
which grieved even more the plays, whether good or bad,
that were made to suffer from the apery.

Even at this late day the lesson still has not been
learned, and plays which would be relatively more accept-
able if staged honestly and simply are made ridiculous by
staging and directing them as if they were the progeny of
stereopticon machines, radios, moving pictures, amplifiers,
forum platforms, church choirs, Greek burlesque shows,
and the warden and matron of an institution for the men-
tally unbalanced. Incidental music is introduced with no
warrant other than that it covers up the directors' inability
to suggest elsewise a sense of dramatic flow. Steps leading
into the auditorium and causing actors whose proper place
is on the stage to migrate down them into the audience
are resorted to to achieve an intimacy that sound and

180 Galileo

knowledgeable direction might incorporate into the play
itself. And various other such tomfooleries convert the
occasion less into one of drama than one largely indis-
tinguishable from a vaudeville show plus only a plot.
While but a few of these excrescences are visible in this
presentation, the few tend not to assist but further to dis-
compose it. And, as heretofore, they impress the spectator
as being arbitrarily introduced solely in the hope of de-
ceiving him into a belief that there is more in the scanty
script than meets the ear. They are, in short, to any repu-
table staging what a monkey is to an organ-grinder: a
catchpenny distraction from the wheezing contribution of
his instrument.

The Brecht play, which has discernibly been maneu-
vered by Laughton into a vehicle suitable to his histrionic
eccentricities, centers on Galileo's historic conflict with
the church. Its one relative merit is that it does not, as
might have been expected, take pride in drawing a paral-
lel to truth's modern conflict with authority. Though in
this instance there might have been some dramatic reason-
ableness, the play wisely prefers to rest in mere implica-
tion. This, surely, is a welcome change from the current
tendency of our playwrights to draw parallels between
the past and present which often goes to such strained
lengths that, if it continues, we may anticipate plays which
will demonstrate the similarity of Noah's troubles with
the Ark to John Ringling North's with his circus, to say
nothing, probably, of others attesting to the considerable
identity of the suppression of some of Voltaire's writings
and the censorship of Twentieth Century-Fox's movie,
Forever Amber.

Whether Mr. Laughton could still act appeared to be a
moot point, with the upholders of the negative not lack-
ing in number.

181

THE GENTLEMAN FROM ATHENS

DECEMBER 9, 1947

A play by Emmet Lavery. Produced by Martin Gosch in
association with Eunice Healey for 7 performances in the
Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

COUSIN VINCENT KCLPATRICK

Watson White
Miss MARY KTLPATRICK

Ethel Browning

MORGAN KELPATRICK Alan Hewitt
T.ra KJCLPATRICE: Edith Atwater
DANIEL Creighton Thompson

BIG ED LAWRENCE G&ofai Gordon
HON. STEPHEN SOCRATES

CHRISTOPHER Anthony Quinn
IGOR STEPENOV Feodor Chaliapin
NEWS REEL DIRECTOR

LoranceKerr

MIKE RYKOWSKI Lou Polan

CONGRESSMAN ANDREWS

Leopold Badia
CONGRESSMAN BORGSEN

EdLatimer
CONGRESSMAN HARNEIX

Arthur Jarrett

CONGRESSMAN (MRS.) SlRlNGLEY

Elsie May Gordon
RADIO AND NEWSREEL CREWS

Frank Rowan

Oliver Crawford

Leonard Auerbach

SYNOPSIS: The entire action takes place in the drawing-room of
Kilpatrick Hatt, one of the great old houses of Virginia. The year might
be any year coming up. The time covered is from January to June. Act L
Scene 1. New Year's Eve. Scene 2. A few mornings later. Act IE. Scene 1.
Several months later. Scene 2. A few days later. Act in. "Fto0 days later,
early morning.

Director: Sam Wanamaker.

T

AHI

.HE AUTHOR Is one of God's most enviable creatures. He
is so rich in optimism that he believes that a politician
who is constitutionally so crooked that a dill pickle looks
to him like a pretzel may be influenced by an ethical
young woman and a portrait of George Washington to
abjure dishonesty, on the spot and to turn as straight as
an archbishop. I am, as everybody knows, a man imbued
with such consummate faith in most things that I even
go to the extreme of believing in the virtues of holy matri-
mony, raw carrots* and dramatic criticism, but I have

182 The Gentleman from Athens

something of a tussle with myself when it comes to Mr.
Lavery's miracle. He is, of course, not the first playwright
who has presented a devious character brought by personi-
fied rectitude to turn honest. But he is, unless memory is
playing me a dirty trick, the revolutionary first to pre-
sent the chameleon as a politico. Brieux, forty years ago
in La Foi, known to English-speaking audiences as False
Gods, offered the shifty fellow as one originally destined
for the cloth who turns rationalist but who finally sur-
renders to the people's will to believe. And before and
since then we have had all kinds of characters ranging
from hypocrites and swindlers to thieves, jailbirds and
prostitutes who have been induced either by a single vir-
tuous man or woman or by both multiplied by a com-
munal figure to lead or at least plan to lead the better life.
But if among them all a playwright has ever gone so far
as to include a political rogue, I must have been at a some-
what more reasonable burlesque show that night and
missed the sensational event.

It is, however, one of the generally accepted rules of
critical conduct that an author is entitled to treat of any-
thing or anybody in any way he chooses, and that only the
manner and style with which he manages the treatment
are the critic's business. So I suppose, being a union mem-
ber, I shall arbitrarily have to swallow Lavery's politico
as I should have to swallow some other playwright's the-
ory that Thomas Jefferson was the father of Jenny Lind.
You have to be open-minded in this job. But, though I
am willing to abide by the union's by-laws, I'll be hanged
if I am going to do it without repeating that not only has
Lavery thrown his hat into the ring as a hitherto un-
dreamed of idealist but, in my private opinion, has
achieved the remarkable feat of simultaneously talking
through it.

And so we come, perforce and obediently, to his treat-
ment of his extraordinary idea. I should like to report that
it is so novel, witty and accomplished that the idea be-
comes digestible, but I fear that I can't. His uncouth and
shady politician is Charles Hoyt's Maverick Brander out

December 9, 1947 183

of A Texas Steer, minus Hoyt's satire and closer knowl-
edge of the breed. In the character there is further no
trace of the understanding and humor of the politician in
Benjamin Woolfs earlier The Mighty Dollar. The up-
right young woman, once again in this case a secretary,
who reforms the politician, is the same character who has
reformed dozens of characters not politicians in as many
plays. And the business of getting the goods on a political
opponent in the shape of a scandal in the latter's ex-officio
life is the old ravioli out of a quorum of past, dead plays,
among them William C. de Mille's The Woman, pro-
duced by Belasco back in 191 1.

These are just a few intimations of Mr. Lavery's lack
of inventiveness. If you cry for more, there is the proud,
aristocratic young woman who shrinks from the vulgar
hero at the outset but gradually perceives his innate no-
bility, rejects the suitor of her own class, and takes him
for mate. How often you have encountered that charac-
ter, I have neither the time nor the patience to dredge up.
There is also the gentle old Negro butler who has been
with the old Southern family since General Lee as a boy
used to come around to the kitchen door for a handout of
cookies, along with the prim old aunt who girlishly suc-
cumbs to the vulgar hero's boyish charm. Additionally in
the mishmash is the airily indolent brother of the heroine
who is given to drink and whose philosophy is that work is
a form of exercise not to his elegant taste. And the irasci-
ble old male relative of the family who stamps disagree-
ably out of the drawing-room but relents long enough to
pause briefly in the doorway and condescend an amiable
remark in parting. And, among a lot of others, the stereo-
typed indignant Congressmen who storm into the room
and apoplectically tangle themselves up in protestations.
There is another old friend as well, the gangster hench-
man of the crooked politician, but here the author has al-
leviated the rubber-stamp with some likely humor and,
amusingly acted by Lou Polan, the character takes on the
only relative freshness in the entire gallery.

In the role of the political scoundrel who turns cherub,

184 TJie Gentleman from Athens

the screen actor, Anthony Quinn, making his first appear-
ance on the stage, does very well in spite of direction by
Sam Wanamaker that in all probability would have made
Salvini look like Butler Davenport, Mr. Wanamaker's
handling of the players and the stage throughout, indeed,
is the kind that does not seem to have made up its mind
whether the play is drama, comedy, farce, or a series of
blackout sketches. His idea of the punctilio in its various
phases is furthermore, to say the least, strange. He causes
the household servant to cross in front of his mistress
when they leave the drawing-room; he has the aristo-
cratic heroine introducing her aged aunt to the political
bounder instead of vice-versa; he seems to forget that at a
large reception it is not an unconventional practice to
serve a little food and drink; he has a bottle of champagne
standing upright on the buffet for the whole three or
four months of the play's duration; he permits odd charac-
ters periodically to enter the supposedly choice quarters
without being announced; and the general atmosphere
is allowed to suggest less that of "one of the great old
houses of Virginia" than of one of the great old speak-
easies of West Forty-ninth Street.

In the cast is one Gavin Gordon, a tall, skinny mime in
trousers of such modish 1935 width that Falstaff would
get lost in them. I read in the program that Mr. Gordon
in other days was big romantic shakes on the screen op-
posite Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Mr. Gordon
here plays the heroine's suitor with a fixed, fatuous, show-
girl grin that would drive any romantic reaction out of
a gnu.

The public could not take any part of it, and the play
expired where it stood.

185

ANGEL IN THE WINGS. DECEMBER n, 1947

An intimate revue with music and lyrics by Bob Milliard
and Carl Sigman, sketches by Hank Ladd, Ted Luce and
the Hartmans* Produced by Marjorie and Sherman Ewing
for the rest of the season's performances in the Coronet
Theatre.

CAST

Grace and Paul Hartman, Hank Ladd, Viok Roache, Johnny Barnes,
Elaine Stritch, Nadine Gae, Peter Hamilton, Robert Stanton, Eileen Bar-
ton, Patricia Jones, and Bill McGraw.
Director; John Kennedy.

T

J-HJ

.HE DIFFERENCE between a revue and an intimate revue,
of which this is an example, is about one hundred and
sixty thousand dollars. A revue is an expansive affair in
which at least twenty thousand dollars of the two hundred
thousand dollar investment are spent on the bird costumes
which the show-girls wear in the number in which they
represent perfumes, ten thousand dollars on the silver
sequined silk curtain that draws apart in fancy folds,
and twenty-five thousand on the suit for damages brought
by the sketch writers whose stuff was not used. An inti-
mate revue, on the other hand, is one in which several
pieces of cut-out cardboard painted pink or green serve as
scenery; in which what money is left over is spent on a
gauze curtain with autumn leaves painted on It through
which the male and female dance couple axe beheld in
an arty Nijinsky-Pavlova pose and when it lifts come on
and do a snappy fox-trot; and in which most of the
clothes look suspiciously like those the actors have been
wearing at Lindy's.

An intimate revue usually also contains a master of
ceremonies who appears during the scene changes and
passes tbe time while the stagehands are moving off the
pink cardboard cut-out and moving in the green one by

186 Angel in the Wings

commenting facetiously on the economical aspect o the
show, as well as on the advanced age and decrepit con-
dition of the male star. This is supposed to work in re-
verse and make the audience so merrily oblivious of the
truth of the remarks and so hospitably disposed toward
the show that it will think it cost at least half a million
dollars and is really something pretty terrific.

Many of these intimate revues are not merely intimate
but altogether too presumptuously familiar. When one
comes along that is a bit less ancestral than usual, it seems
so much better than it actually is that one is to be par-
doned for writing about it as if it were what it isn't. This
Angel In The Wings is largely a case in point. It is not
that it is good; it is simply that it is better than expected.

The reasons for the comparative endorsement are a
drily humorous conferencier in the person of a comic
named Hank Ladd, a pair of fresh and lively sketches
about a radio breakfast couple program and a speakeasy
for Petrillo banned records, an attractive dancer by name
Nadine Gae, and an over-all air of unaffected modesty.
The stars of the occasion, the Hartmans, have never
struck me as being particularly amusing, though I am
glad to say for their sakes that many fine people think
that I do not know what I am talking about when I make
such a remark. And on the further debit side I am afraid
that I have to list such witticisms as alluding to a woman
from Butte as a beaut; the Apache dance number in which
the male partner in a sweater scowlingly throws his fe-
male partner around the stage; the old vaudeville comedy
magic act in which all the tricks go wrong; and the act in
which Mrs. Hartman negotiates the venerable comedy
dancing business of twirling 'round rapidly a dozen times
and then staggering about the stage with feigned dizziness
while Mr. Hartman despairingly tries to hold her up. Nor
am I able to wax hysterical when Mr. Hartman experi-
ences a violent startle upon the loud pop of a champagne
cork, when a French waiter inquires "Gomme?" and Mr.
Hartman asks, "Come on where?", or when a girl singer
stands in a purple light, screws up her features as if she

December 11, 1947 187

were in the throes of a severe attack of coloenteritis, and
moans that it isn't easy to let a lover go when you still love
him. But when Hank Ladd is on describing the typical
Tennessee Williams character who is despondent because
she has two ears, when the Gae girl is dancing, when
Elaine Stritch is making with the baby talk and the Dixie
accent (though surely not when she is imitating Hilde-
garde or Fannie Brice in a jungle ditty) , and when Ladd
is on again telling of the actor they let out of the show be-
cause he demanded three hundred dollars a week where-
as the Hartmans didn't want to pay him anything and
they couldn't effect a compromise when such is the sit-
uation, I am right there having a good time with everyone
else.

It would seem, nevertheless, that the day has come for
someone to think up a slight departure from the boiler-
plate pattern of these intimate revues. One and all, they
are much alike. First, the master of ceremonies with the
patter. Second, the tough female blues singer in a bright
light followed by the dancing couple- Third, the sketch.
Fourth, again the tough blues singer in a bright light.
Fifth, again the master of ceremonies and more patter.
Sixth, the old vaudeville comedy act. Seventh, the female
sentimental singer in a pink light. Eighth, another sketch.
Ninth, the female comedy singer, with gestures. Tenth,
the master of ceremonies and still more patter. Eleventh,
the cafe scene with imitations of well-known night club
entertainers. And, after the intermission, first, the blues
singer in the bright light accompanied by the tap dancer.
Second, another sketch. Third, the sentimental singer in
a purple light accompanied by the dancing couple.
Fourth, the master of ceremonies and more still of the
patter. Fifth, another comedy song number. Sixth, another
sketch. And, finally, the ensemble shouting a song number
at the tops of their lungs.

Sometimes it seems as if even a team of acrobats would
provide a little novelty.

188

LAMP AT MIDNIGHT. DECEMBER 21, 1947

A play by Barrle Stavis. Produced by New Stages, Inc.> f&i
6 weeks' performances in the New Stages Theatre.

PBOGKAM

GAIJXEOGAIJIJSI Peter Capell
POOSSENA Kathryn Eames

SAGKEDO NICCOLINI Ralph Camargo
GEPE MAZZOLINI

Frederic De Wilde
Ernest Stone
Martin Balsam
Wilford Swire
Earl George
Arnold Robertson
John Merlin
Terry Becker
Jay Barney
Louis HoUister

MAGINI
SXZZE

LlBRI

D'Eixi
PRINCE CESI
FABRICUS

CESABE

COUNT MoROSiNi

ALDOBRANDINI Joseph Silver

CESABINI Martin Tarby

CARDINAL DEL MONTE

Earl I. Hammond
CARDINAL MAFFEO BABBERINI

Kermit Murdoch
AMBASSADOR VIGUENNA

Leonard Sherer

FATHER CLAVIUS Morf Neudell
FATHER LEMBO Michael Howard
CARLO BARBERINI Ben Irving

FRANCESCO BARBERINI

Leon Janney
MOTHER SUPERIOR Dorothy Patten

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in Florence and Rome and is
in two acts.

Director: Boris Tumarin.

I

NDIGNANT OVER THE Experimental Theatre's relinquish-
ment of the play in favor of Brecht's, which also dealt
with Galileo, and believing that the reason therefor lay
solely in Charles Laughton's willingness to appear in the
latter, the just organized New Stages group hastened to
give Stavis' work a hearing. The action was justified, in a
measure. While the play aims considerably higher than
its author's talents can shoot, it is relatively the better of
the two.

As in the Brecht effort, the subject is again the struggle
between Galileo and the Roman Catholic church, which
protested his scientific discoveries as violative of its dogma;
his inner struggle between reverence for the church and
faith in scientific truth and knowledge; and his forced,
racked surrender to compromise. While some of the epi-

December 21, 1947 189

sodes are dramatically animate and while the internal
power of the theme makes some headway even in some
others that are not, the whole is very much less effective
than its parts because the protracted argumentation una-
voidable in any honest handling of the theme tends to
generate the over-all air of a lecture platform poorly
masked in stage settings. This is perhaps inevitable in any
play about a man of profound thought, since such thought
does not lend itself to active drama and to be given
dramatic movement must craftily be percolated through
wit and humor or intermittently distracted from itself
through one chicane or another. Profound thought, in
brief, is embarrassed in drama save it be intimated rather
than directly expressed, save it be used sparingly, and
save it be colored now and then with the pretty dyes of
emotion. The mind of a deep thinker calls in the theatre
for a woman somewhere in the background sentimentally
to interrupt it or for some similiar dramaturgical hum-
buggery to give it an acceptable stage life. It may be sad
that this is so, but drama, alas, seems to be as confounded
and put to rout by a naked brain as the brain itself would
be by the whims of drama.

The production was of an agreeably simple nature, in
contrast to much of that in the Brecht case, though the
acting and direction were mediocre,

190

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

DECEMBER 22, 1947

A dramatization of the Dostoievski novel by Rodney Ack-
land. Produced by Robert Wkitehead and Oliver Rea for
64 performances in the National Theatre.

PROGRAM

LEBEZIATNECOFF Ben Morse

SONIA Dolly Haas

KATERINA IVANNA Lillian Gish

Betty Lou Reim
Sherry Smith
Paton Price
Elisabeth Neumann
Wanna Paul
Robert Donley
Catena Talva
Susan Steett
Mary James

POLYA

LEDA
IVAN
AMALIA

ANYUTKA
His ASSISTANT
NASTASIA
DABIA
LIZAVIETA

RODION ROMANITCH RASKOLJSTEEOFF
JohnGielgud

SIMON ZAHARTTCH MAKMELADOFF
Sanford Meisner

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in a lodging house in St. Peters-
burg in the summer of 1860. Scene 1. Evening. Scene 2. Morning, a week
later. Scene 3. Late afternoon and evening of the next day. Scene 4. The
following morning. Scene 5. Morning of the following day.

Director: Theodore Komisarjevsky.

DI^GTRI PROKOVTTCH RAZOUMTFTHTN
Alexander Scourby
ZAMETOFF Richard Purdy

CASEMIR STAT JST .Awnwrrrng

LOOSHINSKY JE. A. Krumschmidt
PULCHERIA ALEXANBROVNA

Alice John

DOUNIA Marian Seldes

PORFIHI PETOO VTTCH

Vladimir Sokoloff

PRIEST Sandy Campbell

WIDOW Amy Douglass

HER DAUGHTER Jeri Souvinet

FOMTTCH Richard Hayes

I

T USED TO BE SAID that if you sat in front of the Cafe de
la Paix long enough you would soon or late see pass every-
one in the world you knew. It may still be said if you
sit in front of the stage long enough you will soon or late
see pass still another dramatization of Dostoievski's Crime
And Punishment. The dramatizations seem to pop up at
intervals with almost the regularity of Hedda Gabler
and colds in the head, and most of them are scarcely more
acceptable. In my own time, I must have seen from fifteen

December 22, 1947 191

to twenty in one part of the globe or another, and some
of them, I may say, were to be described as whifflebirds.
On the home soil, for example, I remember one sponsored
by Richard Mansfield called Rodion The Student which,
as I dimly recollect from that far back, suggested that Dos-
toievski must also have been the author of Mansfield's
vehicle, Beau Brummell, though Clyde Fitch seemed to
be credited in the program. Sometime later, I recall much
more vividly one by Laurence Irving, acted by E. H.
Sothern, which, until the management protested that the
cost of the marquee lights would bankrupt it, bore the
title The Fool Hath Said In His Heart: There Is No God.
Lending a sympathetic ear to the management's remon-
strances, Mr. Sothern magnanimously shortened it to
simply The Fool Hath Said: There Is No God, which
pacified the management for all of one-half second flat.
When the lights finally went on, A Fool Hath Said was the
compromise. What Dostoievski would have thought of it
all could not have counted, since he would not have recog-
nized the play as anything in any way associated with him.

There were others, one a curio galled The Humble.,
produced two decades ago, and another a re-dramatiza-
tion of a previous dramatization under the novel's title
by Victor Wolfson and Victor Trivas, produced about
twelve years ago. This one got the outer flavor of the book
rather better than the others but, like the rest, it got the
book itself not at all, and small wonder. For the novel's
canvas and its paints are of such dimension and color that
any play fashioned from it to be at all a faithful reflection
would make the average play look like a blackout sketch.
It can no more honestly be reduced to the standard short
playing time than Gotterdammerung. Its fabric is almost
as complex as that of Antony And Cleopatra, and like the
latter its stage presentation in any form offers unusual
hazards.

The present version by Mr. Ackland has its points but,
like all the others, is hardly satisfactory to respecters of
the novel. It swims over the melodramatic surfaces, and
with some skilful theatrical overhand strokes, but it dives

192 Crime and Punishment

nowhere into the psychological depths and only shallowly
into the philosophical. The result is a play that, save in
one or two scenes, merely skims some of the plot ele-
ments of the novel and leaves the cream of its body un-
touched. \Vhat remains is a stage show of sorts but a drama
that seldom gets farther into its source than the latter's
superficial machinery.

In a statement published before his version opened,
Mr. Ackland betrayed both his problem and himself. "I
was determined," he said, "to give the play a life inde-
pendent of the novel." The adjective serves as a criticism
of his approach to the job, with the added criticism that
the independent life has not, except in an obvious melo-
dramatic direction, materialized. "Previous versions had
been done with episodic technique," he continued. While
some previous versions had been thus done, there were
others of which he evidently is not aware which were
no more episodic than his own version. "Based on the
assumption that a slaying in a play automatically classi-
fied it as a murder drama, emphasis had been laid on
the cop-and-killer duel. I preferred to stress the philo-
sophic duel between the Inspector and Raskolnikoff,"
he noted. He may think that he has stressed the philo-
sophic duel between the characters, but aside from two or
three bits of dialogue his duel remains exactly what he
describes as the cop-and-killer business in the earlier ver-
sions. And the slivers of philosophic utterance were in-
corporated into some of these earlier versions just as he
has incorporated them into his. Furthermore, if, as he be-
lieves, a slaying in a play automatically classified it as a
murder drama, it would have been the theatrical conven-
tion to classify Hamlet., among others, as a murder drama,
which may be said, unnecessarily, to be nonsense.

"It occurred to me that the intent of the murder was
the same that led to the establishment of Dachau in our
time. Raskolnikoff had decided a certain woman was ver-
min and should be exterminated, as Hitler wanted to do
to the Jew and as the white supremist would the Negro,"
he confided. How he reconciles this cerebration with his

December 22, 1947 193

subsequent ethical statement that "Contained in the story,
inescapable, eternal, is the truth perceptible equally to
the stone-ager and to the contemporary savant: that there
is no right greater than that of the individual/' I am at a
loss to know.

"Eliminating the murder from view, I nevertheless
thought of somehow suggesting it to the mind's eye of the
audience," he proceeded. "For a while I toyed with having
the landlady ask Raskolnikoff to chop the meat for dinner.
Swinging his arm, Raskolnikoff would sink the meat-axe
with a wet crunch into the meat and bone. Second thought
told me this was a wretchedly bad idea. Besides, in food-
rationed London the sight of fresh meat on a stage would
have provoked resentment, envy and applause." That it
required a second thought on Mr. Ackland's part to dis-
miss his butcher-shop idea is scarcely a credit to his funda-
mental competence as a dramatist. And that it would have
been merely the sight of the meat on the stage that would
have provoked resentment in London audiences, to say
nothing under the dramatic circumstances of envy and,
worse still, applause seems to me to be not only a reflec-
tion on London audiences but on Mr. Ackland's knowl-
edge of dramatic values.

The local stage presentation of the Ackland version of
the novel has a few virtues and many more faults. The
setting by a Russian who has elected the name Paul Sher-
riff is atmospherically excellent, and so, in several of the
scenes, is the lighting. But while the Komisarjevsky stag-
ing and direction of group movement and detail are pic-
torial, he has failed to synchronize the whole into a steady
rhythm and has permitted such an excessive overplaying,
mugging and shouting in the case of a number of the
principal players that some of them give the impression
that they are performing for an audience made up of the
deaf and partly blind. There are also some peculiar inter-
pretations of the roles, Mr. Gielgud, for one example,
indicates the tortured workings of RaskolnikofFs con-
science almost entirely in the kind of grimaces associated
with Willie Howard in the old vaudeville act when his

194 Crime and Punishment

brother Eugene took him to task for his unbecoming con-
duct with a nursemaid in the Park. The best of the per-
formances is that of Vladimir Sokoloff as the examining
magistrate.

Everything considered, I fear that the exhibit is best
critically described, to borrow Dorothy Parker's reply to
the author of a drugstore murder novel who asked her
to supply him with a title, as Crime And Punishment , Jr.

Incidentally, it is likely that one of the reasons for the
numerous commissioned dramatizations of the novel is
the fascination which the role of Raskolnikoff has always
held for the star actor and which in older days sometimes
exceeded even that of a beauty passionately craved by
members of the fair sex. It proffers him as a Thinker and
so excites his secret vanity even more greatly than ever it
was excited by the role which presented him as a fellow of
tremendous valiance, preferably a Due, who, clad in a
white silk shirt with balloon sleeves, single-handed put to
rout with his sword twenty or thirty myrmidons of his
enemy. To appear as a profound philosopher or scientist,
or merely as a mentality capable of meditating the prob-
lems of the cosmos, affords him a larger ecstasy and a
larger dose of unction to his pretensions than some of his
curly-haired, bull-chested, older colleagues ever enjoyed in
rescuing the fair Lady Melrose from the foul embraces of
the dissolute Comte de Beaulieu or in duelling all over
the stage and by their pluck and spirit arousing the ad-
miration of the entire erstwhile foolishly contemptuous
corps of Louis Kill's Musketeers.

195

THE CRADLE WILL ROCK
DECEMBER 26, 1947

A revival of the musical whatnot by Marc Blitzstein. Pro-
duced by Michael Myerberg for 34 performances in, ini-
tially, the Mansfield Theatre.

PROGBAM

MOLL EsteBeLoring

GENT Edward S. Bryce

DICK Jesse White

COP Taggart Casey

REVEREND SALVATION

Harold Patrick

EDITOR DAILY Brooks Dttnbar

YASHA Jack Alberteon

DAUBER Chandler Cowles

PRESIDENT PBEXY Howard Elaine
PROFESSOR TBTXTF. LesUe Litomy
PROFESSOR MAMIE Edmund Hewitt
PROFESSOR SCOOT Ray Fry

DOCTOR SPECIALIST Robert Pierson
HARRY DRUGGIST David Thomas
MR. MISTER Will Geer

MRS. MISTER Vivian Vance

JUNIOR MISTER Dennis King, Jr.

Director: Howard da Stlva.

SISTER MISTER Jo Hurt

STEVE Stephen West Downer

SADIE POLOCK Marie Leidal

GusPoLOcr Walter Scheff

BUGS Eduxtrd S. Bryce

LARRY FOREMAN Alfred Drake
ELLA HAMMER Muriel Smith

ATTEND ANT*S Veins Hazel Shermet
FIRST REPORTER Rex Coston

SECOND REPORTER Gil Houston
CLERK Howard Shanet

> Lucretia Anderson
Robert Burr
John Fleming

CHORUS \ Michael Pollock

Germaine Poulin
Napoleon Reed
Given Ward

FIRST PRODUCED ten years ago at an outlay that
must have amounted to all of forty or fifty dollars, Mr.
Blitzstein's effort profited from the sympathy and good-
will which are often bestowed on necessarily economical
theatrical enterprises, particularly such as are described
by the reviewers as "brave experimental ventures." We
had another touching example in the year past when
Our Lari*, done down in Henry Street for a few hundred
dollars, received much generous praise and when the
identical play subsequently done on Broadway for forty

196 The Cradle Will Rock

thousand got notices from the very same reviewers that
were far from favorable.

Blitzstein's work has now been revived in the uptown
theatre. In place of the single piano that served the orig-
inal production, there is an orchestra more, an or-
chestra presided over by a conductor in white tie and
tails; in place of amateurs, the company is professional;
and instead of a general atmosphere suggestive of high-
school dramatics, the air is more substantially theatrical.
The consequence is that some of those whose hearts were
touched by the obligatory, even pathetic, simplicity and
meagreness of the original, and who persuaded themselves
to see non-existent virtues in it, have turned cold-hearted
and do not see them any longer.

Though a fellow of such warmth of heart that it some-
times burns the waistcoat off me, I could not see them in
the first place. The show seemed to me then what it seems
to me still, which is to say an only faintly passable stunt.
In better truth, it does not seem to me to be even as
faintly passable now as it did initially, since time has con-
verted what was already an unconscious travesty into a
travesty of a travesty. The admission that the present
production is an advance over the original is therefore
much like allowing that a patient down with a complica-
tion of diphtheria and scarlet fever indicates improvement
in the former direction, despite a continuing inflamma-
tory throat condition, but that the scarlet fever is still un-
abated. Mr. Blitzstein is that patient. His inflammation on
behalf of Labor and his fever when he thinks of Capital
are of a violence fatal to his purpose, since Labor in the
intervening decade has progressed economically with such
strides that Capital is sometimes pretty lucky to have its
shirt left. Listening to his wholesale indignation at this
hour is like listening to impassioned exhortations to re-
member the Maine.

Critically, except for a few scattered moments, the ex-
hibit remains the miscegenation of old Union Square
soapbox propaganda and a talented juke-box. Its form is
so ambiguous that even the author and his successive pro-

December 26, 1947 197

elucers seem never to have been able to make up their
minds just how to catalogue it. It has thus from time to
time been dubbed everything from a musical drama to an
opera and from a musical play and operetta to a concert
drama. Presently, in still further puzzlement, it is being
termed "a play in music/' But however it is sliced, it per-
sists, so far as I am concerned, in being blutwurst, in a
fancy skin. It isn't musical drama because what it intends
as drama is really farce. It isn't opera because its score is,
if anything, musical revue. It isn't a musical play because
there is no play but merely a succession of separate num-
bers loosely strung together. It isn't an operetta for the
same reason that it isn't an opera. It isn't concert drama
because it isn't drama or, save its score were to be played
minus actors, concert, and then decidedly freakish concert.
Nor is it in the current description a play in music, unless
anything at all on a theatre stage may be called a play.
"What it is, in short, is not the romance of standard opera,
nor the realism of such experimental opera as Street
Scene., nor much of anything except cantankerous prole-
tarian blitz set to indifferent music and proffered to pop-
gun aesthetes as a revolutionary cannon ball.

If noise were the chief desideratum of the acting and
singing arts, the present company would be replete with
true genius.

198

TOPAZE. DECEMBER 27, 1947

A revival of the comedy by Marcel Pagnol, translated and
adapted by Benn Levy. Produced by Yolanda Mero-Irion,
for the New Opera Company, for one performance in the
Morosco Theatre.

PROGRAM

TOPAZE Oscar Karlweis

JACQUES BLONDET Alan Shay

MUCHE Robert Chisholm

ERNESTINE Effie Afton

TAMISE Joe E. Marks

SUZANNE COURTOISE Tilly Losch
MONSIEUR CORDDSR

Kevin Matthews

MONSIEUR JESSERAND Clifford Sales
MONSIEUR PTTART-VERGINOIJES

Edward Benjamin
MONSIEUR DE VICTOR Roy Rogers
MONSIEUR TRONCHE-BOBINE

Preston Zukor
MONSIEUR DURAND Sonny Cavett

MONSIEUR RAMON David Burke
MONSIEUR GASTON Jimmie Dutton
MONSIEUR PERRON Harold Calvin
BARONESS PTTART-VERGINOLIES

Helen Bonfk
REGIS CASTEL-BENAC

Clarence Derwent
BUTLER David Jones

ROGER DE BERVILLE

Philip Robinson

ODETTE Lucille Patton

POLICEMAN Jean Saks

GERMAINE Ethel Madsen

A VENERABLE OLD MAN

G. Swayne Gordon

SYNOPSIS: Act I. A school classroom in the Pension Muche. May,
1910. Act n. A smatt salon at the home of Suzanne Courtoise. Late after-
noon same day. Act HI. Scene 1. An office of the Topaze Company. Two
months later. Scene 2. Same office. One year later.

Director: Leo Mittler*

E,

EIGHTEEN LONG YEARS have elapsed since the play was
first seen here. Those accustomed to the prevailing ways
of play reviewing will therefore naturally expect that the
statement will be followed by the observation that it has
aged considerably in the meantime. It accordingly be-
comes my unpleasant duty to disappoint their anticipa-
tion. The play has not aged in the least and is still quite
as amusing as it originally was, It remains, in a word, a
humorous and diverting satirical comedy, though I shall
not blame anyone who saw its present performance for

December 27, 1947 199

doubting me. Except for Clarence Derwent in the role
he played those many years ago, the acting, particularly
that of Oscar Karlweis in the leading role once occupied
by Frank Morgan, rid the comedy of most of its humor,
and when for a stray moment the acting did not, the
stage direction of Leo Mittler did. Only Derwent man-
aged the business in hand with any drollery. For the
rest, the poor author had to content himself with nothing
but Tilly Losch's visual beauty. That, true, was some-
thing, even for a sardonic Frenchman, but it was hardly
enough to content a sardonic Frenchman's play.

Pagnol's theme is that honesty may be the best policy
but that the only one who ever makes a dollar out of it is
the publisher who says so in the school-books. His upright
man who learns that probity is not all it is cracked up to
be and who turns prosperous and happy sharper is a gay
creation, as are his two other bunco-men who similarly
appreciate that maxims are for colored postcards and the
walls of nurseries. But such juicy swindlers must not be
swindled out of their amusement qualities by swindling
acting.

The translation by Benn Levy is an acceptable one save
for the conventional belief that a measure of stiffness in
English phraseology will best suggest foreign speech. It
of course does nothing of the kind. What it usually sug-
gests is, first, that the translator lacks a true ear for such
speech and, secondly, at least to American audiences, that
the actors employing it are not raw Frenchmen but over-
educated pulp magazine subscribers.

The even comparative merit of a comedy like this of
PagnoFs, written almost a quarter of a century ago, only
the more impresses upon one the decline of comedy in
so many directions. Leading the mortality statistics in the
catalogue is the artificial species. The mantle so hand-
somely handed down by Congreve to Sheridan and by
Sheridan to Wilde has turned into a tattered, patched,
and seedy evening coat. Since Wilde, the genre has deterio-
rated into nothing better than the kind of thing that Noel
Coward stands for: comedy not artificial in any authentic

20Q Topaze

critical sense but merely trivial. The writing of true arti-
ficial comedy commands a mind of sorts and the genius
for distilling the artificial from the real. The purely arti-
ficial mind can not master it. It calls for a wit based upon
a sound observation and criticism of the peoples and
mores of its period; for a wit, in short, that however
seemingly capricious digs pointedly into the fashions,
manners, and foibles of its time. Without mind, it be-
comes simply frippery, masked with inconsequential hu-
mors. Its commentary becomes vaudeville, and its picture
of its people is developed in a mental dark room in the
acids of wisecracks. The artificiality lies not in the work
itself but in the playwright. It takes an uncommon hand
and an uncommon skill to create an artificial flower that,
while plainly artificial, will give the impression of bear-
ing a close resemblance to a real one, minus only the
scent. The artificial comedy of these later years is all too
transparently manufactured of cheap, tinted tissue, minus
not only the scent but any stem that resembles even re-
motely anything that ever grew out of the soil.

The contrast between the two kinds of comedy of man-
ners may be illustrated, appallingly, by a scene from Con-
greve on the one hand and by one from Coward on the
other. Herewith, Congreve:

Mrs. Millamant: I won't be called names after Fm married;
positively I won't be called names.

Mirabel: Names!

Mrs. Millamant: Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel,
love, sweetheart, and the rest of that nauseous cant in
which men and their wives are so f ulsomely familiar
I shall never bear that. Good Mirabel, don't let us be fa-
miliar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my lady Fadler
and Sir Francis, nor go to Hyde Park together the first
Sunday in a new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers,
and then never to be seen together again; as if we were
proud of one another the first week and ashamed of one
another ever after. Let us never visit together nor go
to a play together; but let tis be very strange and well-

December 27, 1947 201

bred: let us be as strange as if we had been married a
great while, and as well-bred as if we were not married
at all.

Herewith Coward:

Clare (at telephone): Hallo yes hallo, darling no, it's
Clare yes, he's here No, I really couldn't face it
yes, if I were likely to go to India I'd come, but I'm not
likely to go to India I think Rajahs bumble up a
house-party so terribly yes, I know he's different, but
the other one's awful Angela had an agonizing time
with him all the dining-room chairs had to be changed
because they were leather and his religion prevented
him sitting on them all the dogs had to be kept out of
the house because they were unclean, which God knows
was true of the Bedlington, but the other ones were
dean as whistles and then to round everything off he
took Laura Merstham in his car and made passes at her
all the way to Newmarket all right, darling, here he
is (to Bogey) it's Nina, she wants to talk to you

Bogey (at telephone) : Hallo, Nin I can't on Wednesday,
I've got a Guest Night it's a hell of a long way, it'd
take Lours.

The artificial comedy of manners, however, is not the
only form that has fallen on evil days. Polite or so-called
drawing-room comedy seems also largely to liave gone
the way of the other. With Haddon Chambers, Hubert
Henry Davies, R. G. Carton, Robert Marshal! and their
ilk dead, with W. S. Maugham's retirement from the
theatre, and with Frederick Lonsdale latterly delinquent,
England's sole contribution in late years, aside from the
Coward aforesaid, has been a parcel of Rattigans and
Savorys, all without exception unequipped for anything
but minor glossy sfaowshop stuffs, feeble, strained, and
generally witless. France, once a source of much critical
pleasure, has provided nothing, or at best only weak vari-
ants of what her playwrights had earlier managed so
deftly. Bourdet, Guitry, Achard, and the rest, when they

202 Topaze

have written anything at all, have produced plays either
considerably inferior to their earlier works or obvious,
tired, and crippled paraphrases.

Drawing-room comedy has never been the field of Ger-
man playwrights, and Germany has hence never figured in
the form. Austrian playwrights similarly have seldom been
fetched by the species and, when they were, have missed
iL But Hungary in other days exported some agreeable
specimens, as those who recall the Molnar school remem-
ber, and that school seems to have dried up sometime
since. What is left? Italy? Italy, like Spain, never gifted in
such divertissements, has not produced anything in years,
and even then produced nothing in any way comparable
to the English product. America? Let us see.

Only three men in the United States today figure in
the form: Kelly, Behrman, and the naturalized former
Englishman, van Druten. Kelly, however, is not strictly
to be defined as a writer of polite drawing-room comedy,
though his last play, The Fatal Weakness, a less able job
than he has done in other directions, Calls into the cate-
gory. His plays, though sometimes scenically drawing-
room and here and there intermittently suggesting polite
comedy, are of a more serious essence and tend rather
toward straight drama. They lack, too, the sense of fash-
ion and deliberate wit of the genre. Behrman, who prom-
ised to be a polished comedy writer of some stature and
who in one or two plays came off nicely, has in later years
fallen victim to a social consciousness and didacticism
which have played havoc with him. The sound writer of
polite comedy is skilful in the art of -saying something as
if it amounted to nothing. The Behrmans say nothing as
if it amounted to something. And in a voice that banishes
their comedy purpose.

Van Druten perhaps comes closest at the moment to
achieving the form. He has grace and style and wit. His
weaknesses lie in his failure to catch quite the nonchalant
tone proper to urbane comedy and in what seems to be
an occasional calculated playing down to the groundlings.
But there is in his writing a degree of taste and manner,

December 27, 1947 203

a cultivated point of view, and a quality of humor that
in combination serve his ends.

Thirty-eight years ago, Walter Prichard Eaton, in an
essay titled Our Comedy Of Bad Manners, observed, "All
of us who care for the amenities of life, who esteem cor-
rect deportment in its proper place, who are charmed
by grace and distinction and hurt by its absence from
plays where it belongs, have suffered only too often from
the prevalent bad manners of the American theatre. . . .
It is characteristic of a certain type of jingo 'Americanism*
to consider good manners as a sign of social snobbishness
and to regard personal grace and distinction as a cover
for mental and moral sloth, even a cover for the idle rich
who ride down Fifth Avenue with lap dogs. This attitude
is both a misapprehension of what constitutes good man-
ners and personal distinction, and a gross flattery of those
who ride down Fifth Avenue with lap dogs. . . . Could
the stage display more personal distinction, could it put
forth the charm of good manners, of style and elegance,
could it show the grace of correctly spoken English, it
would not, perhaps, so entirely hold the mirror up to
American nature (as that nature is expressed in American
manners) , but it would make American nature more
worthy to be mirrored."

Though there are nowadays left few idle rich to ride or
even walk down Fifth Avenue with or without lap dogs,
the scene as Eaton described it has otherwise after these
many years little changed. The comedy of bad manners
still operates profusely on our stage. Sometimes its vul-
garity is amusing; much more often its vulgarity is pain-
ful. In the better cases, as in some such exhibit as Born
Yesterday, we get bad manners deliberately dramatized for
their own sake, and the result is entertaining. In the mid-
dle ground, as in such as John Loves Mary, we get bad
manners often confused in the playwright's mind with
good, and the result is a species of backstairs farce lodged
in a semi-drawing-room atmosphere. In the worst cases,
as in such as Heads Or Tails, we get playwrights who can
not distinguish between good manners and bad and who

204 Topaze

give us the bad in the full conviction that they are the very
essence of the good, let alone extremely high-toned.

As a sample of the dialogue in these latter abnormities,
I submit the following from the last named:

She (soulfully) : We will go to Mama Gorgongolies in the
Village and have chianti and cherries jubilee. (Explod-
ing with enthusiasm) : We won't get to bed until twelve
o'clock.

He (coyly) : Let's make it ten.

She (even more coyly) : Let's.

He (quite beside himself) : And you will wear your black
nightgown.

She (pretending to be shocked) : Darling!

He (aggressively) : You will, won't you?

She (overpowered by his ardor and demurely dropping her
eyes) : Yes.

The comedy of bad manners at its best is often critically
condoned on the ground that it reflects more or less ac-
curately the American characters and acts with which it
deals. The condonation undoubtedly has a measure of
justification. Bad manners, vulgarity, assertiveness, and
the insecurity of vocabulary that seeks refuge in profanity
and even obscenity are characteristics of a considerable
proportion of our citizenry, who would be as out of place
in a drawing-room as an office chair or a rhinoceros; and
it is rank snobbishness to insist that drama either elevate
them and present them otherwise or dismiss them en-
tirely. But that is not the point. The point is rather that
the comedy in question all too frequently employs an
honest vulgarity to exaggerated vulgar ends and in the
process renders it palpably dishonest.

The notion that all the characters in Restoration com-
edy were to the drawing-room born and bred is, of course,
ridiculous. Restoration comedy, as almost everyone should
know, had its bounders and vulgarians quite as modern
American comedy has them, and they were as greatly
part and parcel of their time as are ours- But the drama-
tists who wrote of them were writers of distinction, where-

December ZT, I94T 205

as those who write of them today may occasionally be
gifted in dramaturgy but otherwise are literary hacks.
Their writing gives the impression that their vulgar
characters are of a piece with themselves, and the dramatic
bad manners much their personal own. Nor need we hark
back to Restoration, Victorian and the earlier Edwardian
times to note the difference. There probably has been no
comedy more plentiful in cads, bounders and vulgarians
than Maugham's Our Betters. Yet the treatment and the
sheer literary skill lift the play to some relative elevation
and one which our later American comedy fabricators
have not approximated.

The Lindsay-Grouse dramatization of the Clarence Day
memoirs, Life With Father., has enjoyed the record con-
secutive run for a comedy in the American theatre. Of the
more than six million people who have seen it and con-
tributed more than ten million dollars to its box-office,
it is probably safe to say that the greater number regard
it as the closest approach to a comedy of good manners
which they have engaged in the period. Their regard for
it in that light is doubtless due to the circumstances that
its characters are fairly affluent, of respectable social status,
and dress weli, that they speak the English language with-
out a Broadway accent, that they can afford servants, and
that the setting is a well-furnished so-called "morning
room" in a house on then fashionable Madison Avenue
in New York. Yet, for all these externals, the fact remains
that it is for the larger part not a comedy of good man-
ners at all, but one of very bad The central figure, the
father of the tide, is a compendium of bad manners; sev-
eral of the other characters would have been kicked out
of any Edith Wharton drawing-room, presuming that
they could have got into the house in the first place; the
general conduct is severely at odds with the punctilio;
the house is run in a middle-class manner; the atmos-
phere is middle-class; and the speech is equally middle-
class. But so used are our audiences to something much
lower in social tone that by comparison the comedy seems
to them to be something quite definitely tony.

Topaze

Our theatregoers, in brief, have become so impregnated
with the comedy of bad manners that one in which the
manners are even a shade better strikes them as being the
height of fashionable good taste and refinement.

And conditions seem to be growing increasingly worse.
The manner which a Langdon Mitchell brought into our
theatre and a Jesse Lynch Williams after him has all but
disappeared. Our present day comedy most often sounds
as if it had been conceived and written by men whose
idea of a butler has been gained from the screen perform-
ances of Arthur Treacher, whose idea of style begins and
ends with the wearing of dinner coats, whose notion of
polished wit is a wisequip about caviar, whose concep-
tion of cultivated conversation is anything that embraces
allusions to Freud, Gide and Dorothy Parker, and whose
drawing-rooms or their equivalents are notable chiefly
for the obvious discomfort of characters who are asked to
appear nonchalantly at ease in them. This is nowhere more
evident than in those comedies which hopefully aspire to
the polite label. The unintentional vulgarity in such in-
stances is frequently double that of the intentional in
other dramatic directions.

What it all comes to, I suppose, is the needlessly re-
peated criticism that one can write only about what one
himself knows and feels and has at least to a degree ex-
perienced. Our playwrights today with rare exception do
not know of what they write, and the result is much like
an "English society comedy" which its author, a young
man resident in Bridgeport, Connecticut, not long ago
sent to me, unsolicited, for my inspection. It was not
necessary for me to read farther than the cast of charac-
ters and the setting. The former disclosed, at the top of the
list, the following: "Count Debrett, a Lord." The latter
was described as "The Drawing-room and Adjoining
Boudoir of the Duchess."

207

D'OYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY
DECEMBER 29, 1947

A repertory of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Produced
by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company for rj weeks' per-
formances in the Century Theatre.

PRINCIPALS

Martyn Green, Charles Doming, Darreli Fancourt, Leonard Osborn,
Thomas Round, Richard Walker, Richard Watson, Radley Flynn, Gwyn-
eth Cullimore, Denise Findlay, Joan Gillingham, Ella Halman, Margaret
Mitchell, and Helen Roberts.
Director: Anna BetheL

T,

IE THEATREGOER who never can get enough of Gilbert
and Sullivan was now once again in his element. The
theatregoer in question is for the most part an elderly
gentleman in an elderly tuxedo, as it was then known, and
is rarely seen in a playhouse except when his old favorites
are the bill, whereupon he emerges from his inglenook
and blissfully hums the old songs ahead of the singers,
and laughs fit to kill at all the old whimsies, and has the
sixtieth or seventieth time of his life. I envy him. I envy
him though, like him, his lovebirds are among my love-
birds too. I envy him rather because, unlike him, I some-
how can get enough of them and because in this late day
of my theatregoing and after having swum in them since
boyhood, often not without large pleasure, I find that
endless repetition has got me down. I duly appreciate
that the confession will cause him and others like him to
view me as a candidate for that branch of psychosomatic
medicine known as cerebral osteopathy, which concerns
itself with persuading the patient to forget the bones in
his brain. But just the same, I have had my fill. I already
know the twain by heart and, while I share everyone else's
warm admiration for them, I do not experience much
present delight in learning them by heart all over again.

208 DVyly Carte Opera Company

1 thus probably find myself in a class apart from many
playgoers, among them those who similarly are always able
to discover new and fresh meanings in Hamlet. In the
course of my professional duties, I obediently sit through
the famous comic operas one after another and, while of
course fully realizing the worth of most of them, no longer
have much fun. This, obviously, is an admission no critic
should make. To be respected, a critic should pretend
that he finds illimitable personal rapture in anything of
unquestioned merit, even though he has seen and heard
It more times than he remembers. It is demanded of him
by tradition that The Mikado, for instance, seem as hilar-
ious the fiftieth times he attends it as the first, that the
satire of Patience never cease to overwhelm him with its
cleverness, and that the rest of the repertory continue to
enchant him with no slightest let-up. He must, in short,
be a liar, not about the quality of the operettas, but about
the boundless jocund effect they have on him. Well, I'm
the boy who chopped down the cherry-tree. I am tired of
hearing the works year after year; I no longer get the lift
from them that I once did; and to blazes with critical re-
spectability.

There is another remarkable thing about the inveterate
Gilbert and Sullivan fans, and it makes one envy them
double measure. No matter how poor the performance,
they will, if it is not an outright garlic, swallow it. They
may, true enough, reluctantly admit that maybe it is not
so good as some they have seen, but no matter. You can't
kill Gilbert and Sullivan whatever you do to them is their
creed, and they stick to it, raptly. Some of the rest of us
may ask for at least a little stage talent, but we only offend
them. Gilbert and Sullivan are to them as their mothers,
family doctors, and pet dogs: they can do no wrong and
no one can do wrong to them.

Loyalty is often a laudable quality, and I am not mock-
ing it as such. But, like love and criticism of acting, it is
not always exactly discriminating. The Gilbert and Sulli-
van operas remain what they. ever have been. But when
they are produced, as often they are produced, with set-

December 29, 1947 209

tings and costumes that would be blackballed by the mem-
bership committee of any respectable storehouse, with
singers who are only moderately acceptable and who can
not act, and with direction that evidently has confused
the stage with a gout clinic, loyalty takes on a suspension
of judgment comparable to dismissing as of no conse-
quence a bad attack of parotiditis or love.

These strictures certainly do not in some respects apply
to this D'Oyly Carte company. Though its personnel is
nothing much in the department of acting, its voices are
considerably superior to the average and give the produc-
tions their full due. Moreover, the Inner spirit of the ex-
hibits is nicely realized. There can be little complaint in
these quarters. It is chiefly on the pictorial side and in the
manipulation of the stage that matters are lacking. Most
of the scenery and costumes look like something Donald
Wolfit left behind in England when he came over last
year, and the direction too frequently insinuates that
some of the actors are victims of Friedreich's disease. The
occasion, in brief, is satisfactory so far as the ears go, but
for complete enjoyment it is perhaps advisable to keep
the eyes Closed.

There was, however, at least one item that we could
look forward to with something approaching ecstasy.
Whatever the settings and dress of the earlier presenta-
tions were like, it was promised that, if we were patient,
the company's sixth offering, The Yeomen Of The Guard,
would be sensational in one respect. There would be new
scenery and new costumes. This was the most exciting
piece of news about a Gilbert and Sullivan production in
years. The prospect of seeing any such production, and
one of The Yeomen Of The Guard in particular, that
looked as if it had not been playing the English or Ameri-
can borscht circuit since 1875 was more than we could
happily bear. I have been looking at The Yeomen both
here and abroad maybe not quite so often as The Merry
Widow but surely as often as The Beggar's Opera, and I
have seen more Tower of London scenery that resembled
the old August Dupschnitz brewery than I can recollect

210 D 9 Oyly Carte Opera Company

without a couple of drinks. And I have also seen more
Yeomen uniforms that looked like oversize red union
suits with brass buttons attached than I can recall with-
out three. So it came as tidings to be shouted from the
housetops that at last I was going to be privileged to see
something that would not make me think it wasn't The
Yeomen I was at but much more probably an old Castle
Square Opera company production of The Daughter Of
The Regiment, which according to grandpa was some-
thing.

Game eventually the great night. The new scenery and
the new costumes were there as promised. No longer did
the Tower of London look like the old August Diip-
schnitz brewery; it resembled much more impressively
the new wing to the old Schlitz brewery in Milwaukee.
And no longer did the Yeomen uniforms look like over-
size red union suits; they looked much more like oversize
museum strawberry shortcakes.

The repertory, in addition to The Yeomen., included
The Mikado, The Pirates Of Penzance, Trial By Jury,
lolanthe, Pinafore, Cox And Box, The Gondoliers, and
Patience.

211

SKIPPER NEXT TO GOD. JANUARY 4. 1948

A play by Jan de Hartog. Produced by the Experimental
Theatre, Inc., for 93 performances in, initially, the Max-
ine Elliott Theatre.

PROGRAM

PASSENGERS

RICHTERS Joseph Anthony

HENKY Robert White

WILLEMSE Si Oakland

OFFICER OF SOUTH AMERICAN

MILITARY POLICE Carmen Costi
MEYER John Becher

JORIS KUIFER, CAPTAIN

JohnGarfield
SOUTH AMERICAN CONSUL

Wa&ace Acton

RABBI WoifeBarzeU

FIRST JEW Michael Let&in

SECONI> JEW Peter Kass

"CHIEF" DAVELAAR JohnSheUie
BRUINSMA, CAPTAIN OF THE

AMSTERDAM Jabez Grog

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place in the Captains
cabin of the steamship Tfifi Young NeHy. Act I. As the ship is lying in a
South American port. Act EL A month and a half later, just off the
United States coast. Act HE. Four days later.

Director: Lee Strasberg,

ANCEBICAN NAVAL OFFICER

Richard Coogan
DUTCH NAVAL OFFICER

Eugene Stuckmann
THE CLERGYMAN Harry Irvine
Florence Aquino
Joe Bernard
NolaCMton
AMan Frank
Frances Gear
RuthK.HiM
B$t Lazarus
John Marley
Edwin Ross
Paul Wilson

O,

"NE WAY In which to get considerably more credit
than one's due is to put on a play so bad that it is ridicu-
lous and then follow it with another which, while also
pretty bad, is not so bad as the other and which hence will
be greeted by the reviewers as something relatively splen-
dacious. Since readers are apt to overlook the fact that the
praise is merely comparative, they will take it as wholly
deserved, and the playwright, who, if he had not produced
the first chokeberry, would properly have been raked over

212 Skipper Next to God

the coals, accordingly finds himself sporting a tin medal
which for the moment shines like gold.

De Hartog, the young Hollander whose This Time To-
morrow several months before was received with a bar-
rage of whizgigs and catcalls, is now satisfiedly wearing the
medal as a result of the production of this poor but some-
what better play. Instead of cancer research, transmigra-
tion of souls, life after death, and the mortal effect of too
enthusiastic kissing, he presently occupies himself with
the problem of religion in conflict with mundane law
and once again loses whatever may have been dramatic
in the idea in enough windy argument and, on this oc-
casion, Biblical quotations to have driven the late Billy
Sunday to a rest cure.

Since you can not get away, outside of politics, with
simply windy argument and Biblical quotations, de Har-
tog has had to think up a vehicle in which to transport
them to a theatre stage and some hoped-for paying trade.
His conveyance is a ship loaded with unwanted Jewish
refugees seeking a port of landing, and in an effort to
make the argumentation and quotations pass for drama he
dresses himself up as the ship's skipper and unloads them
on a number of actors who in turn are made to pass them-
selves off for dramatic characters by loudly contradicting
him. To extend matters for the necessary two and one-half
hours' playing time, he resorts to the scarcely novel plan,
first, of having the authorities at one port refuse the refu-
gees a landing; secondly, of keeping the ship at sea vainly
seeking another possible landing; and, thirdly and finally,
of obtaining sanctuary for the refugees in an American
port. This last he accomplishes through a stratagem so
absurdly melodramatic (the scuttling of the vessel) that
it would be jswallowable only along with a bushel of pea-
nuts. The sole things missing are the boatload of rescuing
Marines, the waving of the flag, and the old-time brass
rail on which merrily to slide down from the gallery.

It seemed, at least up to the moment, that what the Ex-
perimental Theatre's directorate particularly cherished
were plays in which the leading character struggles fero-

January 4, 1948 213

ciously with his conscience. First we had Galileo giving
his a violent wrestle; now we had this Skipper. Struggling
with conscience has produced some fine plays and I am
not complaining on that score. But when, as in the two
plays in question, all I get is the spectacle of an actor hav-
ing a terrible tussle with himself while the other actors
are having a terrible tussle with their playwright, I think
that I may be forgiven for wishing he might take off his
makeup and go to work instead in a novel. It is only once
or twice that de Hartog seems to remember that, after all,
these other actors are supposed to be characters in an alive
play and gives .them anything dramatic to do. And it is
for this reason, among others, that the evening offers the
impression of de Hartog himself hi a naval costume des-
perately trying to deliver a lengthy harangue on his re-
ligious confusion in the face of mankind's harsh legal
edicts while being constantly interrupted and badgered
by a cast of kibitzers.

The Strasberg staging was generally efficient and the
company on the whole acceptable, but the feeling of the
more experienced criticism was that while Garfield's per-
formance of the central role met fully its melodramatic
requirements, it failed to project, other than by facial and
anatomical contortions, the introspective and meditative.
Mr. Garfield added himself, in an interview previous to
the opening, to the hierarchy of theatrical sages. The play,
he observed, "is what is called non-commercial because
there is no woman in the cast." The womanless The Last
Mile was so non-commercial that it ran for almost an en-
tire year. The woinankss Journey's End was so non-com-
mercial that it only made a fortune. The womanless Com-
mand Decision is so non-commercial that it has garnered
a very handsome profit. And Skipper Next To God in turn
is so non-commercial that the trade it did was so consid-
erable that it had to be moved into a larger theatre and
found its prosperous run halted only because Garfield
saw fit to abandon it for his Hollywood commitments.

Among the numerous other such sages there is, for ex-
ample, Mr. John Golden, the well-known producer and a

214 Skipper Next to God

gentleman of apparently limitless brain. This Mr. Golden
has recently contributed to one of the periodicals a treat-
ise called "What Makes A Play A Hit?" "I have since a
boy studied plays and playwriters from Sophocles to Sher-
wood and I believe I know as much as any long-haired
bald brow who specializes in such matters/' he confides
to the reader. Though thus reassured, the reader is per-
haps to be pardoned a morsel of skepticism in respect to
what the oracle is subsequently to remember and an-
nounce when he then forthwith engages this: "I accepted
a new comedy with its story of the rejuvenation of a couple
of lovable comedy crooks . . . that seemed to me to have
every ingredient for success." The successful comedy in
point (its name was Turn To The Right) contained not
a couple of but three crooks, the reader disturbingly re-
calls, and they were not rejuvenated but reformed.

Nevertheless, he considerately permits Mr. Golden to
proceed. "After giving the question some thought, it oc-
curred to me that the most interesting and heretofore un-
recorded Common Denominator of the long-run popular
hits seemed to be concerned with elderly or married peo-
ple. The demand, it seems, is for the Old Birds," pontifi-
cates our authority. Whereupon he confidently mentions
various long-run plays that fitted into the category. Among
these were Abie's Irish Rose, in which both parties of the
title were very young; The Count Of Monte Cristo, in
which the hero was a young man and even after nearly
twenty years in prison and for all his white wig factually
not much over forty; The County Fair, with its low come-
dian merely dressed in spinsterish apparel and with its
stage occupied by younger folk; Sherlock Holmes with
William Gillette "well past sixty," remarks Mr. Golden
in which Gillette, who at the time was only forty-three,
played his own dramatization of the hardly doddering
sleuth; and Harvey, in which the central character is far
from venerable.

Mr. Golden thereupon speculates if there is not a bit of
sense to the guess "that American theatregoers like old
folks liars, drttnks, cheats, or respectable, virtuous, even

January 4, 1948 215

well-bred anything so long as they Ye old." The reade
speculates too, and then looks up the records of the fift}
four plays which have achieved the longest runs in th
more modern American theatre. Of the fifty-four he find
that all of forty-six, maybe even forty-seven, did not dea
with old folks and that in the great majority of these, a
in most of the plays earlier named, the younger folk wer<
not married, or at least not for the major portions of th<
exhibits. Undaunted, however, Mr. Golden proceeds t<
point out that if further substantiation of his theory i
needed, the amusement columns of the newspapers listinj
the hits of last season would supply it. A glance at thes<
columns showed the following plays which seem to em
barrass our oracle: Joan Of Lorraine, Lady Windermere'
Fan, Happy Birthday,, Years Ago,, Burlesque, John Love
Mary, The Importance Of Being Earnest, Alice In Won
derland and some others, including such holdovers a
Born Yesterday, The Voice Of The Turtle, Harvey, etc

Mr. Golden winds up his authoritative cogitations witl
some words on what he describes as "the great Edgar Wai
lace story, Ben Hur."

Another deep thinker is Mr. Dudley Nichols, who ha
contributed to Theatre Arts an essay called, "Death Of /
Critic." Though the essay, when it deals with the moving
pictures, which constitute Mr. Nichols* most passionat<
interest, is commendable, its profundities when it en
gages itself with the theatre are, it is to be feared, COB
siderably less so.

"At first," says Mr. Nichols, "the cinema began to domi
nate the theatre, though those who are wedded to the stag*
will hardly admit it. But the looseniiig-up of stage tech-
niques, revolving or sliding stages, cutting to quick sue
cessive scenes by means of lighting effects, expressionisrr
itself was a result of the influence of cinema." Our thinkei
here thinks, alas, through his prejudice. The cinema
though earlier invented, actually began with the crud<
The Great Train Robbery in 1905 or thereabout. Sinc<
then it has, of course, gready developed and gone in fo]
such improvements as Mr. Nichols indicates. But fai

216 Skipper Next to God

from influencing the stage with them, as he oddly seems
to imagine, it was the other way 'round. The sliding plat-
form stage, he may be instructed, was the theatre's devel-
oped inheritance from the classic theatre of ancient
Greece, in which, as a wagon device, it was known as the
eccyclema or exostra. The revolving stage was invented in
Japan in 1895 and was adopted by the German stage a
year later. Cutting to quick successive scenes by means of
lighting effects was familiar in the old Hanlon Brothers
and Charles Yale extravaganzas back in the same general
period. And when Mr. Nichols says that "expressionism
itself was a result of the influence of the cinema," it seems
to indicate that it is dangerous to go out in the Holly-
wood sun without a hat. Expressionism was known to the
theatre and its stage, he should learn when he recovers,
from the time of the first production of Strindberg's The
Dream Play in 1902, and was subsequently and quickly
taken up by such playwrights as Georg Kaiser, et al. It was
the dramatic development of an attitude toward the arts
which earlier originated in Germany, and it was many
years later that the cinema first heard and made use of it.

The stage, in all save a few minor particulars, has domi-
nated the cinema in all its most important aspects. The
cinema has sometimes been successful in camouflaging the
influences and passing them off on the unknowing as cine-
matkally original. But simple research will show that
what may impress such as being to the cinema born are
really only extensions of or embellished borrowings from
the stage.

The talented moving picture director, Rouben Ma-
moulian, once sought mightily to disprove this with the
declaration that the screen had nevertheless devised ways
to show things in drama that the stage with its limitations
could not possibly show. It was politely pointed out to
him that those were tlie very things which had no place
in good drama and whidi the stage and its servitors had
peremptorily discarded,

217

VOLPONE. JANUARY 8, 1948

A revival of the Ben Jonson satirical comedy. Produced by
the newly established New York City Theatre Company
for 2 weeks' performances in the City Center Theatre.

FROGB AM

VOLPONE Jo$& Ferrer SECOND GENTLEMAN Bobby Busch

MOSCA Richard Whorf

NANO Leonardo Cimino

ANDROGYNO Richard McMurray

CASTRONE Charles Mendick

CONCUBINA Susan Center

VOLTORE John Carradine

*- T* Jo.i _* COMMENDATORI

CoRBAcao Fred Stewart

CORVINQ Le Roi Operti

FIRST GENTLEMAN Victor Thorley

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in sixteenth century Venice.
Director: Richard Barf.

CELIA

BONARIO Walter Cog

LADY POLITIC WOULDBE

Paula Laurence
NOTARIQ Lou Gilbert

{EarlJanes
prank CampaneUa
CTTTADINA Marjorie Byers

I

.T is AN EXAGGERATION to say that Volpone is actor-proof,
though even after experience with some rather dowdy
performances one is tempted to venture the opinion, but
it is less an exaggeration to say that it is audience-proof,
or, more accurately, audience-proof to any theatre assem-
blage above the grade of one given to a veneration of
Biblical drama, dog acts, and ice skating shows. Jonson's
incontinent comedy of rogues and rascals is both in theme
and genius of execution iuesistible: a delight to the ear
and in action an equal delight to the eye. It excels every
other play in its thematic catalogue, and remains over
the centuries as theatrically lively as in the year it was
born.

The present version by the Messrs. Ferrer, Whorf and
Barr, which is as free from scholastic reverence as a sub-
sidized college football player and even more athletic,
has offended the critical sensibilities of such as can not
sleep for nights if they detect a misplaced colon in the

218 Volpone

phrasing even of Marlowe. Its resort to occasional slap-
stick and giddy pace seems to them a violation of punctili-
ous library conduct and intolerable disrespect to the text.
I am afraid that I can not number myself among the af-
fronted. The stage treatment, while grantedly here and
there abandoned and dismissive of some of the text's rhe-
torical eloquence, does not vitiate the play's spirit; it has
been duplicated in one or two European productions
without critical qualm and to acceptable effect; and, above
all, it goes to make a jolly show without damaging the core
of the Jonson intent. For what he wrote is after all a
minor modern classic and, excellent in its category as it
remains, some liberties with it should not be too upset-
ting.

The performance, considering the short period allotted
for rehearsals, and the physical production, considering
the small means in hand, were the admission fee was
only two dollars a bargain in these days of barnumed
theatre prices. When the play was shown last season, the
cost was double, but by virtue of Donald Wolfit's por-
trayal of the leading role amply worth it. To get it for
only half that amount (indeed less, if tickets for the sub-
sequent pair of productions were bought simultaneously)
was to get it for no more than was currently demanded in
the sidestreet restaurants for a small lamb chop. Ferrer
may not have been as wholly satisfactory in the role as
Wolfit, but he was good enough. Whorf s Mosca to a
degree, John Carradine's Voltore, Fred Stewart's Corbac-
cio, and Le Roi Operti's Corvino all fitted into the ver-
sion's frame. And most of the rest of the cast did not much
interfere with the evening's rampageous tone.

It may seem that I am making some allowances, as I
have previously noted is often the critical practice, for
the imposed economy of the production. I am making less
than may be suspected. I have seen productions that cost
four times as much which, if more strictly obedient to the
text, were not so amusing.

Among the colleagues who sternly protested the afore-
said liberties taken with the play was one whose review

January 8, 1948 219

took the somewhat greater liberty of observing that it is
Voltore who is willing to give over his own virtuous wife
to Volpone in his eagerness to inherit the miser's gold*"
The company's second bill in its series of three presen-
tations, also for a two weeks* engagement, was a revival of
Patrick Hamilton's Angel Street, with Ferrer and Whorf
in the principal male roles and Uta Hagen in the princi-
pal female. Though the performance was a fairly compe-
tent one, there was considerable critical regret that any
such ambitious enterprise should have followed Jonson
with a purely commercial showshop offering.

220

HARVEST OF YEARS. JANUARY 12, 1948

A play by DeWitt Bodeen. Produced by Arthur /. Beck-
hard for 16 performances in the Hudson Theatre.

PROGRAM

ANNA BROMAEK Esther Dale

MEJJUDE BBOMARI: Emily Noble
MARGARET A BROMABK

Leona M oriole
JUI-ES BBDMAKE Philip Abbott

ASTBID BRGMABX

Virgm&i Robinson
BERTHA BROMARX PMJtpa Bevans
JENNY NEUSON Lenka Peterson
CHRIS BBOMAKK RtmeUHardie
BERNHABB JoNscm Robert Cratdey

SYNOPSIS: The entire action of the play takes place in the Bro-
mark parlor in a farmhouse in San Joaqtdn Valley, California. Act I.
Scene 1. Late afternoon on a dag in midsummer, 1946. Scene 2. Fifteen
minutes later. Act II. Scene 1. A night, the following October. Scene 2.
Afternoon of Christmas Day, Act IIL Late afternoon the following Sep-
tember.

Director: Arthur J. Beckhard.

W

f f H:

HEN A PLAY, particularly one treating of family life,
has a minimum of action and is altogether too talky, it is
often the critical observation that it might much better
have been a novel, which seems to me to be scarcely a re-
spectful view to hold of the novel. Just how a poor play
may automatically constitute a good or even fair novel I
am obtuse enough not to understand. A good novel, true,
may be made into a poor play, but that is obviously a dif-
ferent matter. To believe the other way 'round, however,
does not appear to me to be too abundant in sense. (May
I hope that the reader will not seize the occasion to detect
a contradiction in my remark on a novel in connection
with Skipper Next To God; I refrained from specifying
the quality of the novel.)

Mr. Bodeen's poor play about a Swedish- American fam-
ily in San Joaquin valley, California, having no more ac-
tion than a dead motor and enough talk to suffice half the
canon of Tirso de Molina, was thus expectedly mentioned

January 12, 1948 221

in several quarters as very possibly possessed o the ele-
ments of a quite nobby candidate for fiction book covers.
All I can say is that if it ever appears in that form, I shall
take a chance, without reading it, in proclaiming that it
is just as toxic as it was as a play, and without nervousness
as to wide contradiction.

"I wanted to write a play," Mr. Bodeen explained in
the public prints, "which would show such events as love,
birth and death taking place, but in the end they weren't
the real issues, the occasions that really mattered to these
people. The little moments, the so-called little moments,
were what they remembered." The little moments with
which Mr. Bodeen filled his play may possibly have been
the moments his characters best remembered, but in the
drama such moments, save they be drained through the
comprehension of an accomplished playwright, seem triv-
ial and insignificant, and banish drama from the stage. An
apostrophe to a parlor lamp brought over by an old
mother from Sweden, an extended molasses-pull by mem-
bers of the family (the small matter that their hands might
subsequently be a bit sticky seemed to be overlooked by
the detail-loving Mr. Bodeen) , the dreaming of a black
satin dress with a string of pearls by one of the daughters
such things may have been memorable to the persons
the author pictures, but one can no more make a whole
play of them than one can make a novel.

"All the characters are based on members of my own
family or people I know," Mr. Bodeen continued.
"Whether they wfll ever speak to me again, I don't know."
The apprehension was followed, however, by the remark
that "characters can be based on real persons* but by the
time imagination has come into play, they end scarcely
being recognizable/* Which doesn't seem to me to be
bursting with logic, either.

The author's confusion in such directions is reflected
in the writing of his play, which very evidently was scared
at birth by Chekhov, as is indicated by various scenes like
the one in which the three disconsolate girls dream of Ear-
off things and of the fulfilment of their wishes. But the

222. Harvest of Years

Chekhov influence only confounds the play the more
greatly, since in Bodeen's hands the Russian's technique
of indirection becomes mere fogginess. He tries simul-
taneously to follow four tracks and ends by stumbling
over all of them, with the consequence that his play im-
presses one as never having left the depot.

The dialogue takes such stenciled shapes as "I know how
much you want a farm of your own and how fine it was of
you to have stayed here with us after papa died." The
dramatic invention takes such as the scene in which the
young girl comes down the stairs late at night in her grand-
mother's old wedding dress in the hope of sentimentally
affecting the young man on whom she has set her heart,
to say nothing of the sudden failing of the electrical
power and of the twain being left alone together in the
dark. The character drawing indicates its remarkably close
study In the picturing of a pregnant young woman as be-
ing irritable. And the writing, as in the case of the Levy
hereinbefore mentioned, seeks to get the flavor of a French
character speaking English by having him formally avoid
diminutives and contractions.

The play was staged in so slowly grinding a tempo and
with so many static groupings of the players that it as-
sumed the aspect of being performed in an ice-cream
freezer. Esther Dale as the venerable Swedish mother was
the only member of the cast who remotely resembled a
human being- The rest, however, were not to be blamed,
since what the author wrote were less human beings than
counterfeits of actors hopefully looking for roles that were
not there.

223

POWER WITHOUT GLORY. JANUARY 13, 1948

A crime play by Michael Clayton Hutton. Produced by
John C. Wilson and the Shuberts for 31 performances in
the Booth Theatre.

PROGBAM

FLO Joan Newett

MAGGIE Marjone Rhodes

EDITH Helen Misener

ANNA Hilary LiddeE

CLIFF Peter Murray

JOHN Trevor Ward

EDDIE Lewis Stringer

SYNOPSIS; The action takes place in the John Lords Being-room
in the rear of a London shop. Act I. Scene 1. A winter evening, 5:30.
Scene 2. Half an hour later. Act II. A few minutes later. Act III. An
hour later.

Director: Chloe Gibson.

T

JLra

.HE PRODUCER of what is inclusively catalogued as a
crime play may, if it succeeds, consider himself an excep-
tionally lucky man, privileged to elevate the nose at such
amateurs of fortune as Lucky Baldwin, Lucky Luciano,
Lucky Lou Little, and Edgar Luckenbach. Of eighty-
seven such plays, whether detective, mystery or so-called
psychological, produced in New York and on the road in
the last baker's dozen years, all of eighty have been fail-
ures, and several of the seven that achieved runs did not in
the end show any notable profits.

The collapse of so large a proportion of the mystery
plays in particular, very much greater than that of any
other kind, is itself, I believe, no particular mystery, since
the shortcoming of the majority of them is their tediously
routine pattern. Shortly after the first curtain rises, some-
one is found to have been murdered. The following two
hours are devoted to a labored casting of suspicion on a
variety of characters. And the last five minutes or so are
given over to the sudden detection and exposure of the
criminal. There is seldom any deviation from the mold. An

224 Power without Glory

audience Is as used to it, and by this time as tired of it, as
it is used to and tired of having its male element's hats
sat on and crushed by females who have plumped them-
selves into its seats to chatter with one another during the
intermissions. And not only is it, including the women
who sit on the hats, fed up with the stale pattern itself; it
is still more fed up with wasting over two long hours for
a few meagre minutes of possible excitement just before
the final curtain.

What the put-upon audience very obviously wants is a
departure from the ail-too familiar formula, or at least a
treatment of it that will give it the superficial air of being
a departure. The shoppers for too many years now, come
nine o'clock, have seen someone tumble to the floor, often
without visible cause. They thereafter have been asked to
hang around patiently until five minutes to eleven while
most of the other actors in the company are either cross-
questioned or scrutinized appraisingly through narrowed
eyes by some alleged deductive mastermind who plainly
does not know his assay from a hole in the ground. And
all that they then get for their money is five minutes of ex-
planation that the murder was committed by the last per-
son in the cast who would conceivably have committed it
in actuality.

Occasionally the audience is let in at the start on the
secret of who did the foul deed and is requested to imagine
that it gets its money's worth in watching the miscreant
being tracked down. This is most often an even greater
swindle, since not only does it eliminate the suspense of
guessing who the loafer is, a thriller's best selling point,
but it additionally denies the last minutes of their ex-
planatory denouement, a thriller's second best selling
point.

The customary retort to all such complaints is that they
do not in any way count against a play if it is skilfully
written. The retort is perfectly sound. But the answer to
the perfectly sound retort is that the play seldom if ever
seems to have been written with anything more creative

January 13, 1948 225

than a tack hammer, and, what is more, with a tack ham-
mer that has a penchant less for nails than for the play-
wright's thumb. The direct consequence is that an audi-
ence is usually a dozen jumps ahead of the fumbling
author, and the supplementary consequence is that the
whole thing impresses it as being very silly. In the case
of the routine mysteries, it laughs at the efforts of the
playwrights to throw suspicion on the standardized sinister
butlers, jittery household maids, wastrel sons given to
liquor, wives' past lovers (customarily of foreign origin) ,
and other such characters who from long association it ap-
preciates will under no circumstances be revealed as the
guilty ones. And it laughs just as impiously at the repeated
hokum of suddenly extinguished room lights and suddenly
turned on pocket flash-lights, gasps and shrieks, and all
the other palpable impostures of numberless seasons. Nor
is its curiosity materially improved by the plays in which
the culprit is early made known to it and in which the
hypothetical suspense consists in waiting until he gets his
deserts. It has, alas, already seen too many wives suffer
retribution for having poisoned their husbands' breakfast
coffee or after-dinner brandy, too many evil old maids
seized by the police for having inserted their nieces into
subsequently plastered-up brick walls or into kitchen
ovens, too many husbands enamoured of exotic beauties
pay the penalty for having tried to do away with their legal
mates. . .

What, to repeat, is called for is something a little fresher,
a little newer. The films can get away with the old stuff
simply by tacking onto its end a fifteen minute sequence
in which everybody in the cast jumps onto anything on
wheels and chases the killer for several hundred miles. The
radio apparently can also whitewash it by breaking it up
after the old dime novel fashion, interrupting it with com-
mercials about pills for nervous disorders, and stretching
it out to thirteen installments, each worse than the other.
The theatre, however, is confronted by a more difficult
problem, since its audience is in much greater relative

226 Power without Glory

part no such gull. And that Is the reason why most pro-
ducers of the kind of plays in question become devoted
readers of the want ads.

Mr. Hutton has attempted to provide the something a
little fresher and newer in a crime play (psychological
division) which, though it once again identifies the mur-
derer at its beginning, is less concerned with his being
tracked down and his retribution than with the effect of
the crime on the members of his family and on the young
woman in love with him. But, though some of the writing
and several 6f the scenes are holding and are assisted by
able acting and suitably palpitant stage direction, the ef-
fort, after a serviceable preparatory first act, rises to a
fairly taut second only to drop disastrously into a garru-
lous and tepid third. Theatre patrons who are satisfied
only by murder plays which keep them waiting until
eleven o'clock for an unsatisfactory solution could under
no circumstances, even were it much better than it is, be
expected to lend their trade to one of this sort. But those
who are more intelligently interested in how things started
than how they come out, since things in life apart from
horse races and unloaded dice generally have a way of
coming out much as anticipated, might be counted on to
lend theirs to such a one if the rest of it were only more
creditable. In my case, however, even aside from its de-
faults noted, there was too much additional trouble in re-
solving the heavy Cockney accents into intelligible English
and in resolving the confusion about the part a second
brother in the family seemed to have played in the mur-
der into some intelligible meaning. But when it comes to
trouble in connection with plays of the general species,
you can not entirely trust me, since I usually have all
kinds of it trying to persuade myself that they are in any
way deserving of the attention of dramatic criticism in
the first place.

Mr. Mutton's crime play brought the total of failures
in the period specified to eighty-one out of eighty-eight.

227

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS. JANUARY 14, 1948

A comedy by Florence Ryerson and Colin Clements. Pro-
duced by Philip A. Waxman for the rest of the season's
performances in the Morosco Theatre.

PROGRAM

JULIA CROMWELL Ruth Amos

BEULAH Leta Bonynge

LING Tarn Chung Yn

ADDIE CROMWELL HAMPTON

Nydia Westman
SENATOR WILLIAM CROMWELL

Carl Benton Reid

LILLIAN HAMPTON Mary Kay Jones
NICKEY BiUy Nevard

MRS. GCMBLE Frieda Altman

MRS. WORLEY Marion Weeks

GIFFORD HAMPTON Robin Craven
VINCENT PEMBERTON Michael Hall
MATTHEW CROMWELL John Archer
CLARISSA BLYNN CROMWELL

Joan Tetzel

MRS. TILLEE SPARKER Doris Rich
MAYOR AMBROSE TIBBETT

WtHiam Lee

BIRDIE Ruth Miles

ZTTA Arm Thompson

OPAL Stephanie Foster

SYNOPSIS: The entire action takes place in the winter parlor of
Senator CromwelFs mansion on Nob HiU, San Francisco, in the fall of
1896. Act I. Scene 1. Afternoon in October. Scene 2. The following Sun-
day morning. Act II. Scene 1. Tuesday afternoon. Scene 2. Some hours
later. Act III. Later that night.

Director: Renno Schneider.

T

JLHE HANDIWORK has to do with the woman's suffrage
campaign in the later years of the last century and with the
effect of the hostilities on the members of a San Francisco
household involved in the ruckus. Before it opened, Miss
Ryerson observed to the press, "The suffragette angle is,
however, just background; the play is really about the war
between the sexes." Whereupon Mr. Clements, her hus-
band and co-author, oracularized, "That fight is eternal,
that fight between male and female/* The profound and
original mentality that went into the writing of the play
was thus apparent before We had a look at it. The further
originality of the authors, when we did get a look at it,
was disclosed in such particulars as the wife bent on a po-
litical career to the disquiet of her mate, appropriated

228 Strange Bedfellows

from Hoyt's old farce, A Contented Woman: the sex strike
of wives against their husbands, pilfered from Lysistrata;
and the husbands whose names are discovered among the
customers of the chatelaine of a house of ill repute, bor-
rowed from Ludwig Thoma's Moral. In short, a lot of old-
hat, but occasionally set at such a rakish slant that it again
produces some laughter. Critically speaking, it is all pretty
shabby but, like bygone burlesque, at times incorrigibly
funny.

Not the least of the humorous elements of the occasion
is Ralph Alswang's setting of the 1896 Nob Hill mansion
bursting with miraculous horrors. It is, indeed, so out-
rageously amusing on its own account that I would have
been even more entertained by it if the play in large part
had not been going on inside it. For there are stretches
between the comical passages devoted to the serious sen-
timental love-making of the female politician and her
spouse, to some ruthlessly cute banter by a pair of love-
lorn youngsters, and to supposedly hilarious drinking
bouts which are hard to take and which make the spring-
boards to the jocular aspects of the evening considerably
less springy than the authors hoped. There is also a visible
strain to derive humor from the eccentricities, both visual
and ethical, of the past. After a while, the spectacle of a
woman performing at a rococo speaking-tube, of an old-
fashioned menage as high-toned as a police whistle, and,
among numerous other things, of the horrified shock of
respectability at the mere mention of a red-light district
becomes less the material for amusement than for a juke-
box paraphrase of Hindemith's retrospective Mathis pur-
veyed at the insertion of plugged nickel.

Benno Schneider, appreciating that what the authors
have delivered into his hands is not a comedy but some-
thing half-way between a farce and a Minsky burlesque,
has appropriately directed it in that manner. Carl Benton
Reid's Senator thus properly seems to have stepped out of
an old Hurtig and Seamon show, as do many of the rest of
the company, the best performances in which are those
of Doris Rich, excellent as the Barbary Coast madam;

January 14, 1948 229

Ruth Amos as the Senator's wife who finds that her sex
strike is futile since what interests her elderly husband
much more greatly is food; Nydia Westman as the dili-
gently coy wife of the Senator's crony who similarly, she
discovers, is considerably less interested in connubial em-
braces than in his newspaper and the bottle; and Robin
Craven as her husband. Joan Tetzel, a comely item who
once promised to develop as an actress, indicates that her
later preference for the motion picture cameras has cast
her features and what mobility of expression they previ-
ously had into that facial rigor mortis which passes in
Hollywood for dramatic acting magnificently imbued with
soul.

230

MAKE MINE MANHATTAN
JANUARY 15, 1948

A musical revue, with sketches and lyrics by Arnold B.
Horwitt, music by Richard Lewine. Produced by Joseph
Af . Hyman for the rest of the season's performances in the
Broadhurst Theatre.

PRINCIPALS

David Burns, Sid Caesar, Joshua Shelley, Sheila Bond, Kyle MacDonnell,
Ferry Bruskin, Jack Kilty, Eleanor Bagley, Max Showalter, Danny Dan-
iels, and Hal Loman.

Director: Hassard Short.

MOST MUSICAL COMEDIES, which concern them-
selves mainly with the emotion indiscriminately called
love, have little sense anyway, particularly if they are good,
and since most revues, which concern themselves not even
so much as in that direction, have less, they are best to be
reviewed by very young men who, passionately eager to
become dramatic critics, obviously have no sense at all.
Archer years ago wrote, "Tragedy deliberately sets forth
to remind us of the pitfalls that beset our path in life. It
is, so to speak, self-consciously pathetic. How much more
poignant is the unconscious pathos of the gaudy, glitter-
ing, jigging and jazzing operetta, with its 'beauty chorus/
its bouncing comedians, and its idolized prima donna, the
goddess of a few lime-lit hours! It is not at the St. James's
or the Haymarket, but at Daly's and the Hippodrome that
I, for one, am apt to be haunted by the refrain, 'Into the
night go one and all/ "

Archer was an oldish fellow when he wrote it, and he
spoke for all his oldish and similarly over-sophisticated col-
leagues, dead or alive. He implied that age and the incli-
nation toward gratuitous, even offensive, analysis go hand
in hand, and he proved obliquely that only the beautiful
blindness of youth is competent to appreciate musical

January 15, 194& 231

shows for what, whatever they are not, they are at least
supposed to be. This is not to say, of course, that the young
critic is able to appraise such shows truthfully and exactly.
It is rather to say that his very inability thus to report on
them ipso facto makes his after all the better and more
logical opinion.

The older critic, for example, looks above almost every-
thing else in a musical show for charm. Without it, how-
ever appetizing the other elements, he is disturbed to the
point of pain. The younger one, on the other hand, thinks
that charm robs the show of what he terms "life," that it
somehow is on the effeminate side, and that what is a great
deal more desirable is biff, bang, wham and zingo. The
older one also no longer discovers his heart beating rapidly
at the sight of chemicals counterfeiting feminine beauty,
or his emotions warmed into a consuming bliss by roman-
tic love as seen through the eyes of some plot scribbler
happily married to a lady dentist, or his ears assuaged by
music whose sire was a bordello piano. But to the younger
man it all represents something very gay, something full
of illusion, and at times, indeed, something highly artistic
and extraordinarily meritorious.

When the bill takes even the less pretentious revue
shape, as in the case of this Make Mine Manhattan., the
elderly critic finds he has dined off such fare for so many
years that his entertainment reflexes are not what they
should be. Being one such ancient, there accordingly must
be something seriously wrong with me. Though charm
and several of the other desiderata are missing, I had a
very good time at it. It has some amusing comedians, some
comical sketches, some entertaining dance numbers, and
I even saw a girl or two in it that made me feel not a day
over fifty again.

Maybe it's those vitamin pills.

Since, however, it is barely possible that a chronicle of
my age and the state of my libido does not constitute a
sufficiently adequate account of the proceedings, I sur-
render to bigotry and put down the events of the eve-
ning, both entertaining and not^in chronological order.

232 Make Mine Manhattan

1. "Anything Can Happen In New York." The conventional
opening number, with the lyrics conventionally including
the names of contemporary metropolitan personalities,
which is conventionally unintelligible in view of the fran-
tic tempo in which the words are sung, the noise made by
the audience in settling itself down for the evening, and
the racket made by the accompanying dancers.

2. "First Avenue Gets Ready." A sketch about the woes of a
restaurant operator, humorously acted by David Burns, in
trying to serve the whims of the delegates to the United
Nations, most of them acted by Sid Caesar in a series of
quick costume changes. Caesar in this instance, with his
mimicking of various foreign languages, is amusing.

3. "Phil The Fiddler." A ballet based on an old Horatio Al-
ger from-rags-to-riches story. Not much, and too long.

4. "Movie House In Manhattan," sung by Eleanor Bagley. A
comical ditty about an elaborate Park Avenue film theatre
which has everything in it for the pleasure and comfort of
its patrons but a tolerable picture.

5. "Any Resemblance ..." A merry skit about a newspaper
editor's search for a new dramatic critic who will be partly
deaf and suffering from poor vision and a racking cough
and who will be a sufficient moron to review Broadway
plays in an acceptable manner. Burns as the resigning
critic and Joshua Shelley as the moron candidate are
killing.

6. "Talk To Me." A numb song but a lively accompanying
dance by Sheila Bond and Danny Daniels.

7. "Traftz." An hilarious song number about the food served
in the tea-room restaurants (chili con carne, for example,
with marshmallow sauce) , hilariously rendered by Shelley.

8. "I Don't Know His Name." A sentimental song of the
kind that figure prominently on radio Hit Parade pro-
grams, pleasantly delivered by Jack Kilty and an attrac-
tive girl with a resemblance to Grace Moore at twenty,
Kyle MacDonnell.

9. "The Good Old Days." A waggish old-time sidewalk song
and dance act by the Messrs. Burns and Caesar.

January 15, 1948 233

10. "Once Over Lightly." A burlesque of Allegro. Moderately
amusing, but too long.

11. "Penny Gum Machine." A dreadful mock-serious song
about the tribulations of a subway slot machine, with an
obbligato of physical and facial contortions and quarts of
perspiration by Caesar, remindful of Zero Mostel at his
best, which is horrible.

12. "Saturday Night In Central Park." A tuneful first act fi-
nale embracing the old pinwheel chorus formation and the
usual hullabaloo by the vocal ensemble.

After the intermission:

1. "Ringalevio." A song and dance ensemble number in
which the men and women are dressed as street kids and
in which they play leapfrog, jump over fences and com-
port themselves generally like men and women dressed up
as kids on the stage. Dull.

2. "Noises In The Street." A song number about the early
morning New York din made by milkmen, street cleaners,
street diggers, taxi drivers, et al. y drolly managed by Burns,
Caesar, Shelley, and others.

3. "I Fell In Love With You." Another sentimental duet
(vide "I Don't Know His Name") sung by the same duo in
front of a backdrop picturing the East River by moonlight.

4* "My Brudder And Me." A tough, lively street dance by the
Bond-Daniels team.

5. "Hollywood Heads East." A sketch showing what might
happen if movies were to be made in New York. As funny
a fifteen minutes as have been encountered in a revue in
years, with Burns grand as an East Side garment manufac-
turer hired to play atmosphere in the film being shot and
Caesar almost as good as the elegant director, Bruce Big-
elow, who proves to be also a former East Side garment
manufacturer and who stops the making of the picture to
compare excited notes on die trade with Burns.

6. "Gentleman Friend." A rubber-stamp song and dance
number by Miss Bond, Hal Loman, and the hoofers.

234 Make Mine Manhattan

7. "Subway Song." The stale one about the girl who lives in
Brooklyn and the boy who lives in the Bronx and whose
love wanes because of the trouble in delivering her back
to her remote address, but given some extrinsic humor by
Shelley's delivery.

8. "Full Fathom Five." A jovial sketch in which, among
other things, a salesman proves to the resisting Burns that
a pen will write under water by undressing him and heav-
ing him into a large tank, with Burns' comic gifts again
amply demonstrated.

9. "A Night Out." A song number about the difference,
chiefly monetary, between New York in 1938 and at pres-
ent, performed by Caesar with even more volcanic ardor
and torrential sweat than before, and equally suggestive of
Mostel at his best, which is agonizing.

10. "Glad To Be Back." The finale, with the entire company,
dressed in sports clothes and the scene depicting the Grand
Central Station, singing, with gestures, of its ecstasy at re-
turning to New York after a holiday.

Supplementary notes:

(a) The more personable girls, aside from Miss MacDonnell,
are, if I decipher the playbill correctly, Rhoda Johann-
son, Stephanie Augustine, and a decorative little number
in the dancing chorus who somehow annoyingly disappears
from the show after the first act.

(&) The settings by Frederick Fox, picturing different metro-
politan localities, are passable, but the costumes by Mor-
ton Haack, whose bustle period costuming for Strange
Bedfellows the night before was to be commended as the
derri&re cri, are, except for some in the second act finale,
cheaply unimaginative.

(c) Hassard Short's direction, patterned after the speed tech-
nique of George Abbott, appropriately serves the occa-
sion, though his stage lighting seems better adapted to a
Leon and Eddie's cabaret show than to a revue with pro-
fessional pretensions.

235

THE MEN WE MARRY. JANUARY 16, 1948

A comedy by Elisabeth Cobb and Herschel Williams. Prt
duced by Edgar F. Luckenbach, ]r+, for 3 performance
in the Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

MAGGIE WELCH Shirley Booth

PHTTJ.TP David Anderson

WARREN THROCKMORTON

Robert W&ey

GWENNIE Margaret Hamilton

DR. ALAK LAMBERT Neil Hamilton

JULDE MADISON Marta Linde

MARK KENNICOTT John WiUiarr

LEDA MALLARD Doris Dalto

NED SNYDER Joseph AUen, J

MARY Anne Sargei

PETER STERLING John Hudso

SYNOPSIS: Entire action of the play takes place in the home c
Maggie Welch, located in a fashionable section of Maryland. Time: Th
present. Mid-summer. Act I. A Saturday morning. Act II. Scene 1. A
hour later. The same day. Scene 2. That evening. Act III, Scene J
Two a.m. The following morning. Scene 2. Eight a.m. Same day.

Director: Martin Manulis.

W

f TH1

WHENEVER, outside the theatre, I can not get to sleej
at nights, I no longer count sheep, having found that tha
particular exercise in arithmetic does nothing to WCM
slumber, probably because of the bothersome agility of th
animals and the touching look of sadness on their faces
What I presently count is something much mqre monotc
nous and immeasurably more auspicious as a soporific
the characters I have regularly encountered down the year
in such Broadway comedies as this. I lie down, close nr
eyes, and successively number them, and in little mori
time than it takes to say Elisabeth Cobb and Hersche
Williams I am fast in the arms of Morpheus.

There they parade in all their frozen doldrums: th
smart divorcee with a train of husbands in her wake whos
cynical banter is supposed to constitute such wit as ha
not been heard from a stage since the death of Congreve
the lady novelist who is admired by the other character
for her great womanly wisdom on the score of having wril

236 The Men We Marry

ten such epigrammatic profundities as "Marriage is the
death of love"; her suave New York publisher, generally
cast with an English actor, who professes to be done with
the female sex but who is obviously doomed to marry his
fair client in the last act; and the ingenue who, like her
young swain with the rumpled hair and loosely knotted
tie, gags at the sophistication and flippancy of the other
members of the houseparty and wants only to settle down
and have babies, Also the comedy household maid de-
scendant of May Yokes; the society medico ever in impec-
cable habiliments and squirting manly charm who perches
himself on chair arms and sofa ends and paternally coun-
sels the ladies; the fluttery female nitwit interested in
politics; the small boy devoted to the comic strips who
makes his exits at top speed whooping like an Indian; and
so on.

The frame for the characters in this elegant case is a
country house "located in a fashionable section of Mary-
land," which as presented is as full of tone as a fish-horn.
The plot has to do with the several women's attempt to
discourage the ingenue from marrying the poor young
man of her choice in favor of one with money. The writ-
ing was unmistakably done under water and is consistently
wet. The direction could not have been better, for floor-
walkers in a department store. The actors were helpless
in the face of things. And Donald Oenslager's country
house setting, to say nothing of his lavender lighting of
the Maryland countryside seen through the doors and win-
dows, was admirably suited to the kind of musical comedy
that closes on the Saturday night of its out-of-town tryout.

P.S. On only a single occasion has counting the charac-
ters in such plays not operated toward slumber. That was
on the night I had had ten cups of after-dinner coffee. On
that night, I began counting the stereotyped situations
in the same plays and I had not got beyond the one in
which the men shake cocktails and consider their strategy
against the women before I was happily sound asleep.

237

THE SURVIVORS. JANUARY 19, 1948

A play by Peter Viertel and Irwin Shaw. Produced by
Bernard Hart and Martin Gabel for 8 performances in
the Playhouse.

PROGRAM

RUTSON HEDGE

Marc Lawrence

JODINE DECKER Hume Crongn

ROY CLEMENS

Russell Collins

MARCUS HEDGE Edwin M. Bruce

AJLCOTT

Neil Fitzgerald

LEONARD HAWKES Kenneth Tobey

FINI^.Y DECKER

E. G. Marshall

REVEREND HOYT Guy Arbury

VINCENT KEYES

Louis Calhern

SHERIFF BAGLEY Tom Hoier

TOM CAMERON

Anthony Ross

E dith Rand

STEVE DECKER
MORGAN DECKER

Richard Basehart
Kevin McCarthy

TOWNSPEOFLE

Ray Waist on
Edgar Small

JANE DECKER

Jane Seymour

Eugene Steiner

LUCY DUNNE

Marianne Stewart

SYNOPSIS: Act I line Court Hotel, Decker City,. Missouri. An
early summer afternoon in 1865. Act II. Veranda of the Decker ranch.
That evening. Act HI. Same as Act I. That night.

Director: Martin Gabel.

Q

CO-AUTHOR Mr. Viertel I know nothing save that he
is a writer of Hollywood movies which I have not seen and
of a novel which I have not read. Of Mr. Shaw I know
considerably more. Not only has he written a number of
plays which, while remiss in other directions, have at least
indicated a sense of valid theme and an intermittently in-
telligent approach, but he has to his credit a number of
very able short stories, among them the irresistibly mur-
derous Sailor Off The Bremen and the delicately cognitive
The Girls In Their Summer Dresses. I also know of him
that, though he lately himself had become a practitioner
of drama criticism, he does not like drama critics, in which
attitude he may hardly be said, if eavesdropping has been
proficient, to be strikingly original. However, I do not
much blame him. There are times when I even do not like
myself, and this is one of them.

238 The Survivors

The reasons for my lack of self-Idolatry are two. In the
first place, Mr. Shaw magnanimously exempted me from
his recent dismissal of the critical fraternity as no better
than a pack of half-witted micrococci, and this naturally
prejudices me to regard him as an extremely intelligent
and fastidious gentleman, fit to be ranked with Socrates,
Hegel and Kant, to say nothing of in the punctilious com-
pany of Lord Chesterfield and the Emperor Franz Josef.
And, in the second embarrassing place, the play on which
he has here collaborated is not anywhere nearly so good as
I should like it to be and thus enable me to bestow upon
it a truckload of reciprocal admiration, bursting with ad-
jectives of gaudy and voluptuous hue.

Finding myself in this awkward predicament is scarcely
a pleasure or a comfort. Here I sit saying to myself that it
is a shame I can not trim my remarks in such a manner as
to give the impression that the play is not as poor as it
really is and so in small part pay back Mr. Shaw for his
testimonial to my talents. Here I sit telling myself that this
critical business becomes a damned nuisance when it im-
poses on me the impoliteness of taking a crack at some-
one who has gone out of his way to say genteel things
about me. But here nevertheless I sit and go about boun-
derishly putting down on paper that Mr. Shaw's play, de-
spite the highest of intentions (I'll get that in anyway)
and despite a couple of well-handled scenes (I'll get that
in too) , is an overly talky, platitudinous and melodramati-
cally shaky one that remains at bottom, for all its worthy
idealism (I'll get that in also) , a movie horse opera with-
out a horse.

At this point, blushing with mortification over having
to say such things about so amiable a man's work, I shall
take refuge in a little trickery, possibly very unfair, and
self-consolingly attribute a substantial share of the play's
deficiencies to Mr. Shaw's collaborator, Mr. Viertel. My
excuses for the conceivably unmerited detraction are that
the latter's name figures ahead of Mr. Shaw's in the auth-
orship credit line, thus intimating that the major part of
the job was his, and that, unlike Mr. Shaw this is his

January 19, 1948 239

maiden attempt at playwriting. (I feel a little more at ease
now, though I am not too sure that I should.) But wher-
ever the greater portion of the blame may rest, the unwel-
come fact remains that the play is as obviously short of its
purpose as a shrunk undershirt.

What the collaborators have attempted to write is a
melodrama drawing a parallel between the bellicose bit-
terness and hatred that enveloped the post-Civil War pe-
riod and the same bitterness and hatred that prevail in
the world today. And what they have essayed to sieve
through their stage alarms is a convincing argument that
bloodshed never succeeds in accomplishing what calm
meditation may. Yet what they have achieved, in spite of
their parable perspiration, is merely a gun-feud screen
Western involving the usual cattle ranch, water hole,
drawling sheriff, whiskey guzzling, and dragged-in love
interest and supposedly made suitable to the dramatic
stage by incorporating into it some noble rhetorical
splurges on the uselessness of killing and the greater prac-
ticality of a brotherhood of man. In short, something that
is neither the Hatfield nor the McCoy.

It doesn't work," and for a transparent reason. Not only
is the blood and thunder element too hackneyed to hold
an audience on its own, but the homilies which have been
inserted into it would interrupt and repudiate the effect
of even a melodrama ten times better. There is one precept
about straight melodrama that only rarely may be disre-
garded, and that is never for a moment to retard its action.
Even something as fine as Hamlet's second monologue, if
somehow worked into a melodrama as good as Secret Serv-
ice or Sherlock Holmes, would knock the pins from un-
der it. And when you get oratory which, like that in this
one, may be allowed to be scarcely up to any such standard,
it not only knocks the pins from under it but jumps on it
and tramples the life out of it. When the last curtain of
The Survivors falls, you accordingly feel that for two and
one-half long hours you have been watching nothing more
than Henry Wallace in a Broadway shooting gallery.

Inside abundantly realistic settings by Boris Aronson

240 The Survivors

picturing the interior and exterior of Missouri frontier
shacks, Martin Gabel has directed the rumpus into such
an overdose of physical tension that it is a wonder the ac-
tors do not collapse from a wholesale thrombosis at the
half-way point. In the role of the perplexed feudist torn
between his zeal to pot his enemy neighbor and his sense
of honor, Richard Basehart so postures and fascinatedly
listens to his vocal tones that one suspects he imagines the
evening's bill is Lucia di Lammermoor and that he is En-
rico in pursuit of the foul Edgardo. Louis Calhern does as
well as possible by the Wallace speeches; Hume Cronyn
comports himself like a man of forty in seventy-year-old
whiskers; Russell Collins plays the bartender with such a
surplus of fidgets that the saloon seems to be located some-
where on Angel Street; and E. G. Marshall acts the persist-
ently nosey and snooping brother as if he were shadowing
an illicit asafetida cache.

The rest, except for Neil Fitzgerald in a minor part,
are not much better, though direction in all cases may be
responsible. Anthony Ross screams his lines as if his role
were mugging him; Kevin McCarthy plays the mortally ill
brother role as if it were a trumpet operated by a blast
furnace; and the two ladies of the company, Jane Seymour
and Marianne Stewart, contrastingly deliver their few
lines like instructed wax-works.

Addendum: Report had it that George S. Kaufman and
Moss Hart, among others, had attended the rehearsals of
the play and had suggested various changes in the original
script, all of which were accepted by the authors.

241

THE LAST DANCE. JANUARY 37, 1948

An adaptation of Strindberg's The Dance O Death by
Peter Goldbaum and Robin Short. Produced by Theatre
Associates^ Inc., for 7 performances in the Belasco Theatre.

PKOGRAM

EDGAB Oscar Homolka

ALICE Jessie Royce Landis

JUDITH Anne Jackson

ALAN Richard Hylton

CURTIS Philip Rournevf

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place on a small, semi-
tropical island which could be the colonial possession of any country.
Time: 1 910. Act I. The major's living quarters inside an old fortress. Act
n. Villa BeUe Vue, residence of the heaWt supervisor, the following
spring. Act ILL Same as Act II, two weeks later.

Director: John O'Shaughnessy.

T

XHI

-HE MM. GOLDBAUM AND SHORT, hatchers of this The
Last Dance, have taken Strindberg's forty-seven year old,
two-part The Dance Of Death., one of the most searing
plays in all modern drama, and have turned it into some-
thing closely resembling a whimsical pas de deux. If there
is a play that presents with more horrifying effect what bit-
terness and acrimony can accomplish between two human
beings, I do not know of it. If, on the contrary, there is
one that more greatly shows the horrifying effect of adapt-
ing any such work to the supposed taste of a contemporary
audience, I also do not know of it. What the MM. Gold-
baum and Short have done, in brief, is to remove the sting
of a cobra in order to make it available for a sideshow. As
snake charmers, accordingly, they are frauds. It is not that
they have departed radically from Strindberg's externals.
They have, in fact, stuck pretty close to them. The charac-
ters are outwardly much the same; the thematic and plot
outlines in large part follow the original; and the setting
remains a fortified island, if in this case one in the semi-
tropics instead of one off the coast of Sweden. But what

242 The Last Dance

they have executed on the innards of the play amounts to
a gall-bladder operation performed with a sherbet spoon.

Strindberg, whose own experiences had bred in him a
murderous hatred of marriage, wrote into his play not
merely an indictment of it as a human institution, as Pro-
fessor Frank Chandler observed thirty-odd years ago, but
even as a natural union. Where, as the professor noted,
Lord Beaconsfield protested against it because "It destroys
one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human
being," the Scandinavian lemon-sucker contrarily objected
to it because, as he viewed it, it is torturing to be every
day malevolent and rancorous toward the same person.
And his heinous married pair thus exceeded, as cancer ex-
ceeds barber's itch, Sydney Smith's comparison of a hus-
band and wife to a pair of scissors so joined that they can
not be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet
always punishing any who come between them.

Contemplating the Swede's spouse and mate scheming
against and screaming at each other in a savage mutual
antipathy and not resting until the man is undone by a
stroke and the wife defeated even theft by the chains that
still bind her to him is to see the flesh sliced from both
with the keenest of psychological scalpels. It is a spectacle
at once terrible and, in its terribleness, profound in ec-
centric but searching revelation. The dramatist spares
nothing; the play lays his two principal characters on an
operating table and opens them up to dialogue as rum-
bling with thunder as Strauss' Zarathustra yet equally as
illuminated by lightning flashes. And when it ends, one
exhaustedly feels that about the only way possible to get
any relative relief is to dash out onto the street, grab a car,
and run over a dozen or two children. In the case of The
Last Dance, on the other hand, one feels like running over
the authors. In place of Strindberg's thunder they have
shaken a tin-sheet, and in place of his lightning they have
tossed about a lot of lighted punk-sticks. They jab hair-
pins into the characters where Strindberg jabbed har-
poons, and where he turned an acetylene torch on them
they have turned a pocket flashlight. What we get, conse-

January 27, 1948 243

quently, is the original play largely as he might have told
it to George Kelly. The blinding psychopathology now
wears dark spectacles; the merciless probing is now only
skin-deep. The drama's old dress is there, but there is
nothing under it but the drama's skeleton, loudly rattling
its bones, like a Scandinavian minstrel show.

As with a wild locomotive or mad bull, it would take
some big doing wholly to arrest the furious energy of such
a play and the adapters have not entirely succeeded. A
small measure of it persists in spite of their efforts to flag
it or bury its horns in the ground. But their hope of fash-
ioning a commercial play out of one that is about as com-
mercial as prussic acid remains still a hope, and a very
foolish one. It is a thankless enterprise to try to make ac-
ceptable the work of a dramatist who was cherished by a
Nietzsche to audiences who cherish a Tennessee Williams.

It was, however, not necessary to wait until the curtain
went up to appreciate what we were due to be in for. The
dramatic mentality and theatrical education promoting
the enterprise were sufficiently indicated in a statement
published in the press in advance of the play's opening
by a spokesman for the adapters and producers. "The
adapters," it proclaimed, "believe they have come closer
to the dramatist's intentions than any literal transcription
could bring them. They have treated Dodsdancen [The
Dance Of Death] as a satire (1) on the frustrations of the
marriage relationship, not as a straight drama/* "The fact
remains," it cofitimifcd in extenuation, "that everything
of Strindberg's ever produced in New York has run for a
combined total of only eighty performances," and listed
as the sole plays produced The Dance Of Death, The
Spook Sonata, The Father, and The Bridal Crown. "The
record," it lamented, "is a melancholy one." Not only has
the combined total New York run of the Strindberg plays
mentioned far exceeded the figure named, but the plays
were not the only ones that have seen metropolitan pro-
duction. Others, both long and short, have been Com-
rades, Countess Julie, The Stronger, Easter, Swanwhite,
and The Dream Play.

244 The Last Dance

"For the adapters," the statement warned us finally, "the
play is a maiden effort. Each, however, has written sep-
arately before, Mr. Goldbaum for the films and Mr. Short
for the radio. They met in Hollywood."

A general air of carelessness enveloped almost every-
thing connected with the production. Though the period
of the play was 1910, the costuming of at least one male
character was 1948 in its broad-lapeled tropical wardrobe,
pleated evening trousers, and dress shoes, and the reference
to "dinner jackets" was only one of several anachronisms.
A pair of love-birds in a cage, hung in one setting, were
permitted so constantly and loudly to chirp their admira-
tion for each other that two of the serious scenes between
the wrangling husband and wife were given a burlesque
counterpoint. The lovelorn ingenue was allowed so to
shout her lines that the immediately subsequent outbursts
of the male protagonist seemed almost pianissimo. And so
on. Even the press agent *s program notes were awry. " Jessie
Royce Landis," read one, "vowed never to play the same
type of role twice in succession when she first started her
acting career and has lived up to the vow." Only the season
before, Miss Landis played much the same type of role as
in this play in Little A.

The acting company was best served by Oscar Homolka
who, though Strindberg would not even remotely have
recognized the husband character he played, at least played
it proficiently as the adapters strangely conceived it. Miss
Landis portrayed the envenomed wife mostly by affecting
what Anna Held used to call ze wickaid smile and ze sau-
cee eye and by issuing from time to time a small sardonic
chuckle, meanwhile rolling an imaginary caraway seed on
her tongue. Philip Bourneuf, as the husband's friend for
whom the wife has set her cap, continued, as is his habit,
to read his lines through a tightly set mouth, the while
attempting to organize his larynx into an approximation
to a vibra-harp. Anne Jackson, in the role of the couple's
young daughter, evidently mistook the role, with the di-
rector's permission, for a combination hurdle race and
cheering section and leaped up steps and over furniture

January 27, 1948 245

with such vigor, accompanied by what seemed to be college
yells, that the old Hippodrome management would surely
have signed her up at sight. Richard Hylton, as the
friend's son beloved of Miss Jackson, on the other hand
was directed to comport himself as if the play were being
acted inside a large cake of ice. And when the stage doings
now and then lapsed for a moment into a measure of
tranquillity, all save Homolka and Hylton, who at least
was consistent, appeared elegantly to imagine that the set-
ting of the play was Chichester-on-Chich.

246

LOOK, MA, FM DANCIN'I JANUARY 29, 1948

A musical show., based on an idea by Jerome Robbins,, with
book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, music and
lyrics by Hugh Martin. Produced by George Abbott for
the rest of the season's performances in the Adelphi
Theatre.

PROGRAM

WOTAN
LARRY
DUSTY LEE
ANN BRUCE
SNOW WHITE
EDDIE WINXLER
TOMMY
F, PLANCEK
TANYA DRINSKAYA

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. Pennsylvania Station. New York City.
Scene 2. On tour. Scene 3. A rehearsal hall. Joplin, Mo. Scene 4. On tour.
Scene 5. Hotel room. AmariUo, Tex. Scene 6. Outside a theatre. Phoenix,
Ariz. Scene 7. Stage door of the Philharmonic Auditorum. Los Angeles.
Scene 8. Back stage of the Philharmonic. Scene 9. Stage of the Philhar-
monic. Act II. Scene 1. A railroad platform. Glendale, Calif. Early the
next morning. Scene 2. A Pullman car. Scene 3. On tour. Scene 4. A the-
atre basement. Des Moines, Iowa.

Directors: George Abbott and Jerome Robbins.

Don Liberto
Loren Welch
Alice Pearce
Janet Reed
Virginia Gorski
Harold Lang
Tommy Rail
Robert Harris

tharine Sergava

VLADIMIR LUBOFF
Alexander March
LILY MALLOY Nancy Walker
MR. GLEEB James Lane
MR. FERBISH Eddie Hodge
TANYA'S PARTNER Raul Celada
BELL BOY Dean Campbell
STAGE MANAGER Dan Sattler
SUZY Sandra Deel

T

XH

THE SHOW discloses Jerome Robbins consid-
erably beneath his top form, there is nevertheless enough
evidence in it to indicate that his is still the freshest chore-
ographic imagination to have come into the theatre in
some time. To a stage that over the years slowly progressed
from the merry village maidens* arch leg-work, if not the
chorus pinwheel formations, to the great heights of .ballets
consisting primarily in bad imitations of the real article
bathed in welcomely concealing deep purple lights, he has
brought, if sometimes at the expense of beauty, a catching

January 29, 1948 247

wit and humor combined with a genuine dramatic inven-
tiveness. He has in the process happily and further done
away with most of such routine ballet business as simul-
taneously elevates dancers into the air and depresses
audiences into their seats, with all the solemn gazelle pos-
turings, and, in another direction, with that unvarying
excess of speed which tends doubly to slow up a show be-
tween the dance numbers. In place of all such dingdong
he has managed a satirical cartoonery, an unsentimental
Saroyanism, and an intoxicated fancy that, at its best, in
numbers like the speakeasy era item in Billion Dollar
Baby or the Keystone cops ballet in High-Button Shoes,
has swept the dry dance dust from the stage with a bright
new broom. In the present show he is not, to repeat, at his
fittest, but what little merit in it there is remains his. The
music, lyrics and book by the Messrs. Martin, Lawrence
and Lee are shy on fizz. Nancy Walker, who heads the
cast, is undoubtedly an able performer, in her peculiar
line, but two and a half hours of female brassiness are a
little too much for an old Marilyn Miller man like my-
self. George Abbott has done everything possible to get
some life into the book, but the job he is up against is like
trying to inject effervescence into a bottle of linseed oil.
And, additionally, a musical show without charm, unless
it has enough other gifts to make me forget the absence
of it, always looks to me like an unlighted Christmas tree.

Just before his death last year at the age of eighty-one,
Tristan Bernard, the champion French farce writer, con-
fessed that, for all his International reputation as a humor-
ist, he was at a loss to know just what it is that constitutes
humor. Asked to venture a definition anyway, he replied,
"When a man falls out of a tenth story window and on the
way down says, 'Well, no bones broken so far/ that would
appear to be humor. But if Einstein, seeing the man fall,
asks, Is it the man who is going down or the ground that
is coming up?' and concludes, after some thought, that
there is no conclusive answer, that, it seems, is not humor
but metaphysics."

Exactly what constitutes humor may, as Bernard said,

248 Look, Ma, Tm Dancin!

be a moot point. But there can be no moot point about
what is made to pass for humor in this show. That is, un-
less one esteems as funny such favorite jocosities of Mr.
Abbott as the spectacle of a nauseated woman clapping her
hand to her mouth and rushing to the lavatory, the sud-
den pulling open of a lavatory door and the disclosure of
a character in a private posture, the view of a chubby fe-
male bending over a bed and so constringing her petticoat
that her buttocks take on the picture of a hippopotamus'
rear, or contortive female comics who sing their numbers
as if they were the offspring of frigate sailors and who fili-
ally shiver their timbres.

The plot has to do with the stage-struck daughter of a
rich brewer who backs a ballet company in order to get a
role in it. The music is as loud as a buzz-saw, and equally
invested with melodic quality. The lyrics are dusty shelf-
goods with the old "Gotta Dance" and "If You'll be Mine"
labels. The settings by Oliver Smith are commonplace and
for extra measure include the one in a Pullman sleeper
with the transparent berth curtains. The costumes by John
Pratt look as if they cost at least fifty dollars in toto. Har-
old Lang is an agreeable juvenile and apt with his feet,
but the rest of the troupe, which may have hidden talents,
successfully conceal them.

249

KATHLEEN. FEBRUARY 3, 1948

A comedy by Michael Sayers. Produced by Bea Lawrence
for 2 performances in the Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

THE Hous:

: LELT

Anita Bolster
THE PRIEST: FATHER KEOGH

WhitfordKane
THE POOR MAN'S SON : CHRISTY

HANAFEY James McCaZtion

THE DOCTOR: DR. HORATIO

HOUHUHAN Frank Merlin

THE FATHER: PROFESSOR JASPER
FOGARTY Jack Sheehan

SYNOPSIS; Act I. Noon. Act II. A UtOe later. Act m. Still a little
later.

Scene: The tiving-room-study in Professor Fogarty's house not far
from the city of Dublin.

Time: The action of the play takes place in a single day.

Director: Coby Ruskin.

THE DAUGHTER: KATHLEEN

FOGARTY Andree Wallace

THE RICH MAN'S SON: SEAMUS

MAcCoNiGAL Henry Jones

THE SOLDIER: LIEUTENANT
AENGUS MACOGUE

Whitfield Connor
THE RICH BOY'S FATHER: JAMIE

Morton L. Stevens

IN SEVERAL other Irish plays still praying for local
production, Mr. Sayers' central character is a young girl
touched in the head, but where the other plays are solemn
about the brain condition this one is collaterally light-
minded and seeks to extract amusement instead of sympa-
thetic pain. As in at least two dozen others, Irish, Ameri-
can or what not, it also has the girl pretend that she is
pregnant by an unidentified male, which, speaking of
amusement, may no longer be said to be particularly amus-
ing. And, as in a number of short stories encountered over
the years, the girl writes love letters to herself in the name
of a handsome fellow whom she casually met at a party. It
will thus dawn upon even the more backward that Mr.
Sayers' imagination and invention are a little short of
revolutionary.

The management, evidently appreciating that \^hat it

250 Kathleen

had bought was short-weight, caused its press-agent to
send out in advance of the opening (and quick closing)
the big news that there was a lot more to the play than
anyone would see and that it was at bottom not just the
bad comedy that everyone would see but a sly allegory
about Ireland itself, full of rich meaning. The only rich
meaning that everyone subsequently did see, and clearly,
was that, allegory or no allegory, the management was in
for an immediate loss of its sixty thousand dollar invest-
ment.

The press-agent's brain-child, however, merits quota-
tion for the record. "With Kathleen/' it confided, "Mr.
Sayers satirically carries on a tradition of generations of
Irish poets who, through the long period of British rule
when the writing of political propaganda was forbidden,
kept alive the identity of the nation through the device
of love songs to Kathleen ni Houhlihan. So numerous
were these allegorical plays, written by Yeats, AE, Pearse
and other Irish authors, that a 'Kathleen play' is a recog-
nized form in Irish literature. In the play which opens
this evening, Mr. Sayers through farce and romance tells
in human symbols the story of modern Ireland. Kathleen
is Ireland herself, the Kathleen ni Houhlihan of the an-
cient poets. Although she will be billed on the program as
Kathleen Fogarty, Mr. Sayers points out that her mother
was a Houhlihan; that she has three fathers, representing
history, religion and science; and that she is claimed in
marriage by three suitors a rich man's son, a poor man's
son and an engineer symbolic of types of modern Ire-
land."

It is, of course, remotely possible that Mr. Sayers had
the allegorical idea in his mind before the press-agent put
it there, but, if so, it would take a deductive mind superior
to that of any theatre audience, however sleuthy, to figure
it out in connection with his play. That it was a desperate
after-thought is much more likely, since the speech of the
doctor character to the effect that "some poetic fellow may
see an allegory in all this, but a man like me can't" has
every sound of having been belatedly, guardedly aad whim-

February 3, 1948 251

sically incorporated into the script, from which it protrudes
like a traffic policeman's thumb.

Even were the play fifty times better than it Is, the di-
rection by Goby Ruskin would have murdered it. Mr.
Ruskin' s idea of pace seemed to consist in having the
characters make all their entrances on the breathlessly ex-
cited run as if they were about to announce that there was
a fire back-stage, and all their exits as if they were on then-
way to put it out. The leading role was played by a comely
novice, Andree Wallace, whose every move, gesture and
eye-blink Mr. Ruskin so sedulously over-directed that the
poor girl was made to perform like Charlie McCarthy's
sister in the grip of an alternately dreamy and fighting
jag. The other actors, some of them naturally baleful, suf-
fered further and no less, and the occasion in sum resolved
itself into a secondary allegory, unmistakable, about what
happens in the theatre when all-around incompetence
rears its head.

252

A CHEKHOV BILL. FEBRUARY 5, 1948

Four short comedies by Anton Chekhov: A Tragedian In
Spite Of Himself, The Bear, On The Harmfulness Of To-
bacco, and The Wedding. Produced by the New York City
Theatre Company /or 2 weeks' performances in the City
Center Theatre.

CAST

Jose Ferrer, Richard Whorf, John Carradine, Frances Reid, Robert Car-
roll, Phyllis Hill, Francis Letton, Paula Lawrence, Victor Thorley, Will
Kuluva, Grace Coppin, Ralph Roberts, and Leonardo Cimino.
Directors: lose Ferrer and Richard Barr.

JLROTRACTED USAGE often lends a connotation to terms
which clouds them. Thus, for one example, fig-leaf sug-
gests to the popular mind no longer so much the foliage
of the moraceous genus F icus as something which since
Biblical times has served art and the .less audacious bur-
lesque strip-teasers as a covering for the genital organs,
widely regarded as biologically indecent. And thus, for a
second, Russian drama suggests something closely identi-
fiable with cancer, tuberculosis and lingering death, in a
dark and gloomy clinical ward. It is only lately that
another view has gradually and with difficulty overcome
the prejudiced conception and that a small portion of the
theatregoing public has learned to its astonishment that
Russian drama, like that of other lands, has its share of
comedy along with the sombre.

The present bill of Chekhov short plays was designed
to further the enlightenment and, though the humor in
them is sometimes debatable, the evening at least testifies
to the error that for so long, and in the face of comedies
ranging all the way from K&teyev's, Squaring The Circle,
produced many years ago, to the more recent Simonov's
The Whole World Over, has held sway. Chekhov com-
posed the four vaudevilles under consideration in his very

February 5, 1948 253

early writing days and they amount to little, though in
one or two of them there are hints of his later mature stud-
ies. And, with the passing of time, they have taken on a
thematic aridity and even a flavor of the amateurish. But
they nevertheless, to repeat, are serviceable, whatever
their destitution, in indicating the humorous facets in a
national drama that generally has been thought to be
wholly without them.

A Tragedian In Spite Of Himself is a monologue dis-
guised as not one by having a second actor sit at a table
and nod from time to time while he listens to the harangue
of another. This other narrates for twenty-five minutes the
woes of having to shop in the city for his wife and neigh-
bors, to the accompaniment of the old comedy moxie of
arms full of bundles which are constantly dropping from
his grasp. It cries for a low comedian like the late W. C.
Fields to give it any life, a job which Richard Whorf finds
beyond his means. His efforts to distil amusement from
a wildly disarrayed collar and other such vaudeville prop-
erties come to naught.

The Bear tells of an uncouth land-owner who comes to
demand the payment of a debt incurred by a widow's
spouse, of his loud denunciation of the lady and of woman-
hood in general, and of his final amorous surrender to her
charms. Its humor is negligible and would call for the
ministrations of a Bobby Clark to encourage it. Jos6 Fer-
rer is able to do little with it.

On The Harmfulness Of Tobacco is a monologue by a
henpecked husband on the agonies of his thirty-three years
of married life. It combines comedy with pathos and in
spots is closer to Chekhov's later character delineations.
Ferrer comes off pretty well in this instance.

The Wedding presents the picture of a wedding feast in
a snide restaurant, with the snobbish bride's mother's ef-
forts to give it some tone by hiring a military magnifico
to lend his presence to it. It has some amusing moments,
especially those in which the bogus magnifico, a drooling
octogenarian, bores the assemblage with technical details
of his craft and those in which an inarticulate Greek tries

254 A Chekhov Bill

to make a speech explaining the relations of his native
land with Russia. Whorf as the ancient and Will Kuluva
as the Greek assist in the promotion of what drollery
there is.

On the whole, however, the little plays are much too
long for their content and, except for the Tobacco mono-
logue and parts of The Wedding, I prefer the economy
of the late Tristan Bernard's The Exile,, recorded as the
shortest play ever to have seen production. The scene is
a frontier cabin. Sitting at the fireplace is a mountaineer.
A knock at the door is heard. He opens it and a man rushes
in. The dialogue:

Exile: "Whoever you are, have pity on a hunted

man. There is a price on my head/'
Mountaineer: "How much?"

Curtain

255

A LONG WAY FROM HOME

FEBRUARY 8j 1948

An adaptation of Gorki's The Lower Depths 63; Randolph
Goodman and Walter Carroll Produced by the Experi-
mental Theatre, Inc., for 6 performances in the Maxine
Elliott Theatre.

PROGRAM

DUKE

BESSIE

DEE

LILY

MARY

FOUR-EYES

SILKY

SAD-ACT

GRADY HORN

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place in a basement lodg-
ing house, under a poolhaU on the outskirts of Durham, N. C. The time is
the present. Act I. Scene 1. Basement of Qrady Horn's. A spring morn-
ing. Scene 2. The same. That night. Act IL Scene 1. The backyard. Eve-
ning. Several days later. Scene 2, Same as Act L Night, a few weeks later.

Director: Alan Schneider.

Henry Scott
Virginia Girvin
Harry Bolden
Mildred Smith

JOEBUCE
MARCY
PREACHER
BELLY-BOY

Beatrice Wade

CKT.TNE

Catherine Ayers
Maurice EUis

COTTON
CYRIL

W&tiam Marshall

STUD

Augustus Smith

. BARTENDER

Josh White

Ruby Dee

Alonzo Boson

James Wright

Fredi Washington

Earl Sydnor

KenRenard

Joseph James

Eric Burroughs

w

T THI

FHENEVE31 THE LATE Florenz Ziegfeld was at a loss
what to do in one of his Follies, it was his wont to bring
on the girls. Whenever a producer, whether of musicals
or drama, is nowadays at a similar loss for an idea, he
brings on the Negroes. It is thus that we have had them
in everything from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, from
Gilbert and Sullivan to Shaw, and from The Show-Off to
Arsenic And Old Lace, not to mention in various shaky
new play and show scripts originally intended for white ac-
tors which have been sanguinely hocus-pocused into ve-
hicles for black. We have also had numerous singular
adaptations of plays both ancient and modern, some going
to such extremes as, in the instance of Anna Lucasta, con-

256 A Long Way from Home

verting Polish characters into Negroes and in other in-
stances presenting blacks as even High Church British.
It will probably be any day now that some producer will
get the notion that the Black and Tans must have been
Ethiopians and will bequeath us O'Casey's The Plough
And The Stars with an Afroyank cast.

The presentation of a version of Gorki's The Lower
Depths which transplants the scene from Russia to North
Carolina and alters the Muscovite characters into Dixie
Negroes accordingly has about the same daring experi-
mental value as pouring ketchup on beans. The enter-
prise, indeed, seems to be directed less toward any real
experiment than toward the possible chance, if it were to
indicate any signs of box-office life, of moving it over to
Broadway and cashing in. A modern classic has been
turned into a minor showshop item; a drama of Russian
character, Russian viewpoint and Russian soul has been
worked into a Catfish Row entertainment, minus only a
score.

The friendly contention in these cases is that, after all,
human beings are at bottom much alike and that conse-
quently there is nothing particularly violative of such a
play as Gorki's in changing its characters from Russians
to American Negroes. It is a pretty argument, one will
admit, but I still am harassed by the peculiar notion that
the Chinese, let us say, differ somewhat from the Scandi-
navians and even the Slavs from Durham, N. C., blacks.
There are, of course, superficial identities in nations and
races, but the identities stop there; and to adapt, however
freely, a drama that is essentially as Slavic as Gorki's to a
people approximately as Slavic as corn pone is almost as
far-fetched as adapting Lady Windermere's Fan to such
persons as figure in Tobacco Road.

It is a further friendly point that, in order to enjoy any
such adaptation, one should dismiss the original play from
mind and accept the presentation simply on its own. I
have the weakness to confess that I am not up to any such
agreeable suspension of judgment. If the bill of the eve-
ning is specifically stated to be an adaptation of The

February 8, 1948 257

Lower Depths,, I somehow keep thinking of The Lower
Depths and not of any completely Independent effort. The
problem of dismissing Gorki, or even of being conscious
of him at only widely spaced intervals, is beyond me; and
I suspect that it would be the same if the authors were to
appropriate the Russian without credit and offer the ex-
hibit as their own.

It is all very well and proper for college boys to under-
take such adaptation pranks for their annual shows, but it
is hardly justifiable in the case of an organization that
makes large pretences of artistic dramatic experiment un-
der the aegis of still another organization that elects to
call itself by the impressive name, the American National
Theatre and Academy. I am not so snobbish as to believe
that interesting experiment and the box-office may not
conceivably go hand in hand. But, as I have remarked
earlier, I suffer a considerable skepticism about any organ-
ization like this one which has demonstrated pretty clearly
that it is thinking of the box-office at the expense of sound
and reputable dramatic exploration.

What interest there is in the presentation lies obliquely
in contemplating the humor of Southern Negroes postur-
ing a deep Russian introspection, grievously lamenting
the effects of alcoholic indulgence, and otherwise comport-
ing themselves, with imposed straight faces, like soul-tor-
tured Slavs.

The performance was generally of the percussion sort
often given by Negroes unrestrained by modulatory stage
direction.

258

CHURCH STREET AND THE RESPECTFUL
PROSTITUTE. FEBRUARY 9, 1948

A revival of the short play by Lennox Robinson and a new
play by Jean-Paul Sartre, translated by Eva Wo las. Pro-
duced by New Stages, Inc., for the rest of the season's per-
formances in, initially, the New Stages Theatre.

PROGRAM
CHURCH STREET

KATE RIORDAN Dorothy Patten
HUGH RIORDAN Earl Hammond
AUNT MOLL Charme Allen
JACK RIORDAN Frank Butler
MOLLY RIORDAN Shirley Eggleston
Miss SARAH PETTTGREW
Florida Freibus
MRS. LUCY LACY Ann Eliot

SALLIE LONG Gertrude Corey
JIM DALY Lon Clark
HONOR BEWLEY Barbara Joyce
JOSEPH RIORDAN Edgar Stehli
EVOKED HUGH Eugene Paid
DR. SMITH Morton Lawrence
NURSE SMITH Sarah Cunningham
CLERGYMAN William Brower

SYNOPSIS: The play takes place in the Riordans* living-room in
a flat above the local bank in Knock, Ireland. Time: the present.

THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE

JAMES Sid Walters

SENATOR CLARKE Wendell Holmes
A MAN Martin Tarby

I.TZZTE McKAYE Meg Mundy

THE NEGRO John Marriott

FRED Karl Weber

JOHN Wittard Swire

SYNOPSIS: Scene 1. A room in a southern town; morning. Scene
2. The same; that evening.

Directors: John O'Shaughnessy and Mary Hunter.

T

XHE ROBINSON ITEM, performed here originally in 1934
by the Abbey Theatre company, is a sub-Pirandello exercise
far beneath its author's competences as revealed in such
of his interesting plays as The White-Headed Boy, etc. Its
story is of 1 a disconsolate playwright, returned to Ireland
from London, who is persuaded that in the seemingly pro-
saic people in his early home lurk possibly esoteric and

February 9, 1948 259

available dramatic plots, and who sets himself to imagine
them in a fantastic interlude wherein they act out their
lives. In the end, he finds himself in doubt as to how much
of his fancy may be real and how much false. All that the
author has been able to derive from the idea is a repeti-
tive and tenuous comedy, much of it destitute of any dra-
matic spirit. Some of its weaknesses were glossed over in
the hands of the Abbey company, which included such im-
pressive names as Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Shields, F. J.
McCormick, Denis O'Dea, Michael Dolan, P. J. Carolan,
Maureen Delany and Eileen Crowe. But in the hands of
the present troupe the frailties are only accentuated.

The Sartre fanatics had a time of it sustaining their en-
thusiasm for their hero in the face of The Respectful Pros-
titute. That they were able to put up the show they did
is a credit to their loyalty, if not to their powers of critical
inquiry. Having extolled him as the redeemer of the mod-
ern drama, they were slightly abashed by what, though
they cautiously admitted it only by implication, was little
more than another melodrama in which a Negro in the
American South is falsely accused of the rape of a white
woman and in which the customary pressure is brought
to bear to prove his guilt in order to cover up a crime
committed by a white man.

It is, of course, possible for a creditable dramatist to
write a bad play; we have had sufficient instances of merit
suddenly and for the nonce descended to mediocrity; but
I doubt if any playwright so surpassingly worthy as Sartre
has been touted by his disciples to be has produced one
quite so impeachable as this. Quite aside from its other
infirmities, it indicates in its supposedly super-cerebellar
author an ignorance beyond the melodramatically super-
ficial of subject matter and a speciousness of approach
that turn it at times not into something merely approxi-
mating caricature but caricature outright. And without
the veneer of the 1 Existentialist philosophastry which pre-
viously has bedazzled the high-strung into imagining that
there was much more to his plays than the less twittery

260 Church Street and Respectful Prostitute

could manage to detect in them, it shows up both itself
and its author in a sizzling light, as his idolators in France
and England have reluctantly and with pain been embar-
rassed to admit, and as even his local votaries have had
some visible agony in disbelieving. That, however, despite
their momentary mild hesitations they will presently and
with all the old fervor return to the tonic is not hard, if
one reflects on past statistics in similar directions, to sur-
mise. It took many years to disillusion the stanch be-
lievers in even the Cardiff giant and Henry George.

That Sartre's local constituency was partly deceived by
Eva Wolas, his translator, is to be allowed. The precau-
tionary lady has deleted from his original script a little of
its imbecility, has here and there edited into it a measure
of credibility that it was wholly without, and has lent it
a small share of theatrical conviction. As Sartre wrote the
play, it was often so ridiculously alien in its approach to
its theme that even the French critics had no trouble in
sniffing its absurdities and making sport of them. As it
now stands, it is still a cut-and-dried lynch melodrama
with a few effective theatrical moments but, while an im-
provement upon the original, nothing that any third-rate
American playwright could not write, and indeed has.

In such reflections on Sartre's standing, I confine myself
relevantly to his dramatic efforts; his novels are apart from
the appraisal. It is these plays of his, so admired by his in-
fatuates, that in the main present themselves to drama
criticism as so many shoe-box bombs, their dollar alarm
clocks ticking like mad and their wires of a startling prob-
ability, but minus any. real explosives; all, however, pros-
perously scary to such as do not trouble to investigate them
further.

When, on March 16, the company moved uptown into
the Cort Theatre, Thornton Wilder's The Happy Journey
was substituted for the Robinson play as a curtain-raiser.
Written seventeen years ago its original title was The
Happy Journey To Trenton and Camden and since
played by various amateur groups, it is a highly sentimen-
talized trifle about a family's trip in an old car to visit its

February 9, 1948 261

offspring in her married estate. Wilder employs the bare
stage technique which was later to serve him in Our Town.
Meg Mundy's performance in the Sartre play indicated
an uncommon talent in an actress of so little previous ex-
perience.

262

JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND

FEBRUARY 10, 1948

A revival of the satirical political comedy by George
Bernard Shaw. Produced by the Dublin Gate Theatre,
sponsored by Richard Aldrich and Richard Myers in as-
sociation with Brian Doherty, for 8 performances in the
Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

HODSON Norman Barrs

TOM BROADBENT Hilton Edwards
TIM HAFFIGAN Reginald Jarrnan

LARRY DOYLE

Micheal Mac Liammoir
FATHER KEEGAN Edward Golden
PATSY FARREL Roy Irving

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. The home and office of Doyle 6-
Broadbent, Civil Engineers, Great Georges Street* Westminster, London.
A summer evening, 1904. Scene 2. A hillside near Roscullen, Ireland. An
evening some days later. Scene 3. The Round Tower near Rosct&en.
Later that evening. Act IE. Outside Cornelius Doyle's house, Roscullen.
After breakfast the next morning. Act III. Scene 1. Parlor in Cornelius
Doyle's house. The same day. Scene 2. The hillside. Later in the evening.

Director: Hilton Edwards.

NORAH REELLY Meriel Moore

CORNELIUS DOYLE Denis Brennan
FATHER DEMPSEY Bryan Herbert
AUNT JUDY Nor a O'Mahony

MATTHEW HAFFIGAN Liam Gannon
BARNEY DORAN Patrick Nolan

AN THE GRIND of nightly reviewing, often seemingly with-
out end, you come willy-nilly to the point where merely
relative values occasionally upset your critical poise and
where, after plays for some time have been jumping on
you and squashing you, you find yourself tickled to toss
yourself into the air for one that conducts itself even a lit-
tle more benignly. Such is the case, at least in a manner
of speaking, with this John Bull's Other Island which,
though very far from the best of Shaw, is still so markedly
superior to most of the things we have been getting this
season that under the circumstances it takes on the look of
something right out of a first-class jeweler's window. That,
for all its several deserts and one's comparative delight

February 10, 1948 263

in it, it is not out of any such window or even out of its
author's second top drawer, is, of course, the more sober
critical fact, which I here say the hell with. It is plenty
cockle-warming as things go these nights and I, for one,
am grateful to get it, particularly as it is acted by most of
the visiting Irish players.

With any play -as old as this, it is the habit of the re-
viewers to allow that everybody is probably already so
familiar with it that there is no sense in repeating what it
is about. The dodge is a convenient one, since it simul-
taneously not only flatters the wide dramatic knowledge
of readers perhaps not more than one out of a thousand
of whom knows anything at all about the play, but also
frees the colleagues from telling at length the plot, which
is one of the most irksome things about the reviewing
business. While I appreciate that my particular clientele
is on the other hand on entirely intimate terms with dra-
matic literature from 438 B.C. to the present, it is still re-
motely possible that there may be one or even two amongst
it whose notice the Shaw play has somehow escaped. So
I report for their sakes that it deals humorously with
the contrasting English and Irish temperaments and with
the dreamy but nonetheless gimme Celts as opposed to the
pseudo-realistic, matter-of-fact, and obtuse British.

Plot as plot has never much interested Shaw. He is, to
be sure, sharp enough to realize that you have to have
some kind of story, however slight, to get away with wit,
however meritorious, at the box-office, and so has not neg-
lected a thread of it. The thread is a visit to Ireland by a
pair of codgers from England, one o whom is bent on up-
lifting a hypothetically martyred people about whom he
understands nothing, the other, an anglicized Gelt who
views all reform and altruism as so much flumdiddle. The
Irish begin by laughing at their quixotic saviour but in
the end cagily accept him at his own value for the material
benefactions he promises to bestow on them. As is his cus-
tom, Shaw views the plot, or what there is of it, simply as
a hook on which to hang his hat upside down and let his
ideas spill out. The ideas in this instance may no longer

264 John Buffs Other Island

be as green as grass, but he sprinkles them into a sem-
blance of that hue with the hose of his intellectual wag-
gery and admirable literary style.

"It's all rot/' remarks the English uplifter of a speech
made by the English cynic. "It's all rot, but it's so brilliant,
you know." Reviewing the play when it was first produced
in London almost forty-four years ago, Walkley wrote,
"Here, no doubt, Shaw is slyly taking a side glance at the
usual English verdict on his own works. The verdict will
need some slight modification in the case of John Bull's
Other Island. For ... the play is not all rot. Further, it
has some other qualities than mere brilliancy. It is at once
a delight and disappointment." To which, with some quali-
fication of the word "rot," we may say, stet.

The presenting Gate company, as intimated, is in the
aggregate a good one. I am well aware that there is often
a tendency to overestimate alien actors when they offer
themselves in another land in a play in which they por-
tray characters indigenous to their own. But I trust I re-
tain a composed enough eye to detect in this Irish aggre-
gation the talent that is in some of its members.

In respect to the scanty physical production, Micheal
MacLiammoir, co-founder with Hilton Edwards of the
Gate and one of its present acting company, states, "The
play, as I see it, remains not as a sidelight on the parlia-
mentary passing show of 1904, but as a portrait, incom-
plete but penetrating and faithful, of two countries, two
states of mind, two points of view about life. It is as dated
as an old family photograph, as artless and as revealing.
And that is perhaps why Edwards and I have thought it a
good thing to paint its furniture (which nobody would
think of sitting on any more but just of pointing at and
remembering a little) on the backcloth." The explanation
and apology are scarcely convincing. It would take a con-
siderably mofe expert syllogism to make absorbent any
such flagrant Irish skimping. Mr. MacLiammoir seems to
have forgotten that if you paint furniture, "which nobody
would think of sitting on any more," on a backdrop, it
is a give-away to have nevertheless a few articles of it on

February 10, 1948 265

the stage and to disclose the characters not only thinking
of sitting on them but frequently depositing themselves
on them.

My old friend, Ivor Brown, dramatic critic for the Lon-
don Observer., has lately vented his indignation at the
'little fuss-pots" who allow that some of Shaw's plays and
opinions have dated, and Eric Bentley in his recent other-
wise commendable book on Shaw has similarly permitted
himself to look askance at those who have ventured that
the great man "has had his day." Admiration and respect
for Shaw, in which the twain surely do not stand alone,
seem to have overcome their critical balance. That certain
of Shaw's plays and opinions show their age must be evi-
dent to anyone this side of blind idolatry. This John Bull's
Other Island is just one example. But to show age, whether
in work or in person, is no great smirch, however much
in the former direction it may be theatrically luckless.
One does not speak of trash ageing, since it is already aged
at birth. When one speaks of superior work having aged,
it is a tribute to work that has been esteemed. Mr. Bentley
in this connection also disturbs the judicious. In his gen-
eral ardor for Shaw and speaking of his readings on him,
he writes, "I found praise, but most of it naive or invidi-
ous. I found blame, but most of it incoherent and scurri-
lous." May one doubt if Mr, Bentley's readings, though
broad, have been quite broad enough? What he says is true
so far as he has read and quotes, but surely there has been
praise of Shaw, and a good deal of it from highly percep-
tive quarters, that has been in no degree either naive or
invidious, and blame from equally intelligent quarters
in no degree incoherent and scurrilous. Mr. Bentley, of
course, supports his contention with carefully chosen quo-
tations. I believe that I, among a lot of others, might
match him and even double him with others chosen with
a like finesse.

Nor is he sometimes wholly exact. He speaks in his fore-
word of Edmund Wilson and myself as having written of
Shaw as of a man who had had his day. So far, again true.
But it was a very long and very brilliant day, and when a

266 John Bulls Other Island

writer crosses life's November one may scarcely expect of
him that that day shall still be lit by the earlier dazzling
sunshine. Criticism cannot be sentimental, nor can it con-
found fact with hope, unfortunately. Surely, if the reader
will forgive him, there is no superior and condescending
note, as Mr, Bentley seems to imply, in this from your
present reviewer's last essay on Shaw:

"The great man is nearing the threshold of the here-
after. The theatre has not seen his like before and will not
see it soon again. He has brought to it a merry courage, a
glorious wit, a musical tenderness, and a world of needed
vitality. He has laughed at the old gods and, to give them
their due, the old gods have enjoyed it. And outside and be-
yond the theater he has let a wholesome breeze into more
assorted kinds of national, international, private and pub-
lic buncombe than has any other writer of his period.
Therefore, hail, Shaw, hail and I hope I shall wait long
before saying it farewell!"

267

DOCTOR SOCIAL. FEBRUARY 11,1948

A play by Joseph L. Estry. Produced by Harold Barnard
for 5 performances in the Booth Theatre.

PROGRAM

DR, NOBMAN FARRAR Dean Jogger YVONNE TOMPKINS MaeQuestel

ANN HARRIS Eda Heinemann DR. ISAAC GORDON AlShean

DR. TOM MORRISEY I..KF. MANNING Hatta Stoddard

Ronald Alexander DR. FLEMING Donald Foster

MRS. HAMILTON Netty Malcolm PAUL HARRIS Drake Thorton

SYNOPSIS; The entire action of the play takes place in Dr. Far-
rar's office* laboratory and treatment room. Act I. The present. Act II.
Scene 1. Three weeks later. Scene 2. One week later. Act III. Scene 1.
Ten days later. Scene 2. One hour has passed.

Director: Don AppeU.

J

OSEPH L. ESTRY is alleged to be a pen-name adopted by
one Maxwell Maltz, a stage-struck New York plastic sur-
geon who doubtless will not be remembered as the author
of the book of the musical show, The Lady Says Yes, which
also will doubtless not be remembered, providentially.
Mr. Maltz, a modest man, on the previous occasion cau-
tiously and wisely resorted to the pen-name, Clayton
Ashley. In that case as in this, as if sagely anticipating the
worst, he has stoutly denied that either Estry or Ashley was
or is himself, which is a matter that perhaps will not figure
too importantly in history. If he is not Estry, 1 offer him my
congratulations, since the play under present considera-
tion, a scientific tiddledewink dealing with cancer re-
search, is what the less refined are accustomed to describe
as a smeller.

The hero of the little daisy is, like Mr. Maltz and con-
sentually Mr. Estry, a plastic surgeon of fashionable cut
whose particular genius lies in the reshaping of the unwel-
come noses of his tony clintle. To his office comes one
day a beautiful young woman with a scar on her face,

268 Doctor Social

which he diagnoses as a cancer. Aided by the customary
elaborate program notes consisting o quotations from
such great scientific journals as Newsweek, he experiments
on the fair one with a spleen extract which Newsweek
contends is a potential arrester of carcinoma and not only,
surely to his own and probably to Newsweek's surprise
and satisfaction, cures her but, to the surprise if not satis-
faction of no one who has gone to the theatre more than a
couple of times, falls in love with her. The scientific and
amorous elements in the play are as dovetailed as a beer
keg and baby go-cart; the writing enjoys all the flavor of a
schoolboy's earliest attempts at belles-lettres; and the act-
ing, except for a shrewd histrionic retirement from her
role by Miss Stoddard, is minor summer-theatre. The only
real professional note is to be found in Stewart Chaney's
setting of the medical quarters.

When, in such cases, there is no thought, wit or literary
sleight to compensate one in part for the chlorotic stage
doings, it is as difficult to keep one's mind on the latter as
it is to keep it on the repetitional calypso and umbilicus
shows described in an earlier chapter, and one finds it
scooting off in all kinds of directions. Purists in respect to
drama criticism may blanch at the idea of recording such
digressions, but since drama criticism would be wasted
on any such exhibit as this and hence judicially is not en-
tered into here, the recording may not be as entirely
unwarranted as the precisians contend. While, in the
latter's favor, I will not vouch for the digressions' qual-
ity, I accordingly submit them as examples of what a
bad play and a bad playwright sometimes let me and
you in for.

Here, then, are some of the things that, often irrele-
vantly, went through my head while it was optimistically
expected to be occupying itself with the Estry revelations:

I am a fool not to have stayed at home on a night like
this. The title, Doctor Social^ should have been enough to
warn me.

February 11, 1948 269

The critics have made so many jokes about stage but-
lers that playwrights now seem to be afraid to include one
of them in their scripts. Instead, they resort, safely they
think, to maids. I don't like it. A household that properly
should have a butler, however waywardly comical the
character may be, is unconvincing when his place is taken
by a female servant who generally looks as if she had been
out in the kitchen cooking lamb stew and had whipped on
cap and apron to announce Sir Esme Paget-Mintz.

Many of our current playwrights feel that they have
contrived something extra-commendable if they contain
the action of their plays within a single day. Most often
the time economy is transparently arbitrary and fraudu-
lent. Drama in life on only the rarest occasions confines
its course to twenty-four hours. Much more often it
ploughs slowly over days, months, and years before reach-
ing its resolution.

I have been accused of prejudice in my comprehensive
distaste for and avoidance of the motion picture art
which, its admirers sternly point out to me, has elements
of beauty, intelligence, charm, sex-appeal, etc., which I
am missing. All that I can say in reply, if they are right, is
that Lillian Russell was similarly endorsed for her beauty,
intelligence, charm, sex-appeal, etc., but that she was
nevertheless not my type.

What often seems to impressionables to be symbolism
in the plays of some contemporary playwrights is nothing
but confusion of thought presented as deliberate intelli-
gence.

* * *

If I were an actor, I should train myself to play the roles
of Chinamen. I have yet to see an actor who failed in such
a role; it seems to be one of the easiest and surest, whether

270 Doctor Social

serious or comical, in the entire catalogue. True, I might
not get many jobs, since plays and shows with Chinese
roles, unlike those in the past, are few and far between.
But when I did get one, I would know that I'd be certain
to make a hit. If, on the other hand, I were an actress, I
should look hard for roles in which I would be a Salvation
Army girl, and for the same reason. You think the remarks
are silly? Look up the records for the last seventy-five
years.

* # #

I am frequently asked if I do not get bored going to the
theatre night upon night after so many years. I notice that
the questioner, who has trouble avoiding a trace of pity
in his voice, is usually some man who has enthusiastically
been going to a business office day after day for the same
long length of time.

The line of dialogue in the Messrs. Lindsay's and
Grouse's political play, State Of The Union, which was
most admired by the critics and on which the authors
were most highly complimented by them was, you may
recall, "Let's stop thinking about the next election when
we should be thinking about the next generation." On
January 12, 1927, many years before, in a prayer offered
by Glenn Frank, then president of the University of Wis-
consin, at the fifty-eighth session of the State legislature,
Dr. Frank said, "Save us from thinking about the next elec-
tion when we should be thinking about the next genera-
tion."

I assuredly don't want to argue for a return of the old-
time cloak and sword and kindred dramatic balderdash,
but there was something impressively romantic about its
titles which has passed from the titles of plays today and
which latter bring a suggestion of drabness into a medium
whose very foundation is romance. Think, for example,
of In The Palace Of The King, The Song Of The Sword,

February 11 7 1948 271

The Pride Of Jennico, The Count Of Monte Cristo, The
Sprightly Romance Of Marsac, Sweet Nell Of Old Drury,
When Knighthood Was In Flower, Captain Jinks Of The
Horse Marines, Under Southern Skies, Alice Of Old Vin-
cennes, The Helmet Of Navarre, D'Arcy Of The Guards, A
Gentleman Of France, The Sword Of The King, My Lady
Peggy Goes To Town, Hearts Courageous, The Proud
Prince, John Ermine Of The Yellowstone, The Pretty Sis-
ter Of Jose, Sweet Kitty Bellairs, Dorothy Vernon Of Had-
don Hall, and The Light That Lies In Woman's Eyes.

Think also of // / Were King, The Dagger And The
Cross, The Fortunes Of The King, The Prince Consort, A
Parisian Romance, A Light From St. Agnes, A Blot In The
"Scutcheon, The Girl Of The Golden West, The Fascinat-
ing Mr. Vanderveldt, and The Daughter Of The Tumbrils.
And of The Embassy Ball, The Prince Of India, King
Rene's Daughter, The Rose Of The Rancho, The Belle Of
London Town, The Rose Of The Alhambra, The Royal
Box, When Knights Were Bold, The House Of A Thou-
sand Candles, The Flower Of Yamato, The Royal
Mounted^ and The Prisoner Of Zenda.

Think of all such purple dandies, and now think of
what we have got on theatre marquees in later years: Is
Zat So?, Love 'Em And Leave 'Em, Lady, Behave! , Suds
In Your Eye, Pick-up Girl, Oh, Brother!, Woman Bites
Dog, Crazy With' The Heat, Snoakie, They Should Have
Stood In Bed, Behind Red Lights, Bet Your Life, The
Fireman's Flame, How To Get Tough About It, Waltz In
Goosestep, and Battleship Gertie. To say nothing of
Them's The Reporters, Stick-in-the-Mud, The Sap Runs
High, Hot-Chal, Move On y Sister, Are You Decent?
Stripped, Everything's Jake, She Lived Next To The Fire-
house, She Means Business, A Modern Virgin, A Regular
Guy, and / Gotta Get out.

No wonder.

The remarks of even the most illustrious workers in the
theatre seem sometimes to be without much sense. Yeats,

272 Doctor Social

for example, observes in The Cutting Of An Agate, "Of all
artistic forms that have a large share of the world's atten-
tion, the worst is the play about modern educated people.
It has one mortal ailment: it cannot become impassioned
without making somebody gushing and sentimental. Edu-
cated people have no artistic and charming language ex-
cept light persiflage, and no powerful language at all, and
when they are deeply moved they look silently into the
fireplace. . . ."

Is it possible that Yeats could not have been acquainted
with a great variety of plays like Shaw's Candida among
others, Granville Barker's The Voysey Inheritance,
Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi among others, O'Neill's
Strange Interlude, Maugham's Our Betters and The Cir-
cle, some of the Pirandello plays, etc., etc.?

The never dying argument as to the relative beauty of
the women of the theatre in the yesterdays and today over-
looks, I think, one important point. Even assuming that
both those of the past and the present have enjoyed the
same measure of looks, there can be small doubt that those
of other days seemed the more beautiful, and for a simple
reason. They were, in brief, unlike most of those nowa-
days, presented beautifully by the men who produced the
plays and shows in which they appeared. The good-look-
ing girl in these times is simply thrown at an audience; in
the past, she was insinuated into its appreciation. She was
dressed with elaborate shrewdness; she was set into a lovely
frame; she was lighted with canny care; she was press-
agented with an eye to what is currently known in Holly-
wood as glamour; she was cautiously persuaded by her
management to be seen only in the properly brilliant res-
taurants and with the properly important escorts; and she
was photographed only by the Saronys and Hills and Al-
fred Cheney Johnstons who knew how to drape her figure
and pose her in such wise that what attractiveness she pos-
sessed would be heightened by their cameras. She was, in

February 11, 1948 273

a word, even when beautiful on her own, lent an added
beauty and an added allure.

The beautiful girl today gets no such treatment, or at
best very little. She is photographed by some sidestreet
bulb-squeezer who operates a theatrical mill and turns out
photographs of all and sundry like so many doughnuts;
she is an habituee of Sardfs and the steak houses, and gen-
erally in the company of Broadway nondescripts; she
dresses in public not in the lovely evening things of her
sisters of yesterday but as if she were on her way to market
or a neighborhood movie; her press-agent publicizes her
behind large hamburgers or with pictures showing her
perched on a steamship rail with her skirt up to her navel
and idiotically waving a hand in the air; and her manage-
ment either casts her in unappetizing roles or pushes her
out onto a stage dressed for the most part in an unattrac-
tive manner and lighted by someone whose real forte is
the illumination of Broadway haberdashery windows.

It is a belief stubbornly held by the critics that actors
can not achieve eminence in their profession save the plays
in which they appear are authentic specimens of the dra-
matic art. Many actors and actresses have confounded the
lofty principle. Duse achieved most of her great reputation
in the rhetorical junk of D'Annunzio. Bernhardt achieved
hers largely through such stuff as Sardou's and such things
as Camille and Frou-Frou. All kinds of actors and actresses
have built their reputations on rubbish: George Arliss
with plays like The Darling Of The Gods, The Rose, The
Eyes Of The Heart, etc.; Kyrle Bellew with In His Power,
Loyal Love, Raffles, The Thief, and the like; Mrs. Fiske
with a wealth of claptrap; Charles Hawtrey with every-
thing from The Private Secretary and The Lucky Miss
Dean to A Message From Mars and The Cuckoo; Rose
Coghlan with Forget-Me-Not, A Scrap Of Paper, The Sil-
ver King, Diplomacy, etc.; Madge Kendal with such twad-
dle as Broken Hearts, A Hero Of Romance, The Wicked

274 Doctor Social

World, etc.; and Sir Charles Wyndham with David Gar-
rick, Pink Dominoes, Dearer Than Life, and Betsy,

And let the critics not forget E. S. Willard who spent
his life largely in things like A Pair Of Spectacles, A Fool's
Paradise, and The Professor's Love Story; the great Mod-
jeska whose reputation was assisted quite as much by
Heartsease, The Old Love And The New and Adrienne
Lecouvreur as by her Ophelia and Juliet; and various such
others. And what, today, of Helen Hayes? Let them think
of most of the stuff in which that girl has appeared!

There is something comical to me in the spectacle of
men wrapped up in scientific pursuits who, as in this play,
always in their actor impersonations seem just to have
come from Michael Arlen's tailor.

I certainly am a fool not to have stayed at home and
worked on a possibly readable essay on all such cancer,
syphilis, tuberculosis and like dramatic entertainments,
at least as we have had them, with appropriate specula-
tions on their place in a medium properly the province
of poets, romancers, wits, visionaries, and star-stabbed
imaginations.

275

GHOSTS. FEBRUARY 16, 1948

A revival of the play by Henrik Ibsen. Produced by the
American Repertory Company and Louis J. Singer for one
week's performances in the Cort Theatre.

PROGRAM

REGINAENGSTBAND JeanHagen
JACOB ENGSTRAND Robert Emhardt
REVEREND MR. MANDERS

MBS, HELENA ALVING

Eva Le Ga&ienne
OSWALD ALVING Alfred Ryder

Herbert Berghof

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place at Mrs. Airing's country house,
beside one of the large fjords in western Norway. The time is toward the
end of the nineteenth century. Act L Late afternoon. Act n. After din-
ner; same evening. Act in. Dawn; the next morning.

Director: Margaret Webster.

JLJIKE

: TRUTH and pine needles, Eva Le Gallieiuie crushed
to earth will rise again. Though her career has in greater
measure been marked by frustration, her ardor is inex-
haustible and year after year she persistently springs up to
re-court the muse. The so-called American Repertory
Company indicates a like resilience, perhaps because what
little is left of it is largely this same determined lady.
Though it already has failed twice, here at least in name
it turns up once more. It would be extremely pleasant if
I could report that the dual resurrection was a consumma-
tion to exalt the multitude, but I fear that that joy is de-
nied me. And so yet again it becomes my unhappy duty
to report that the occasion is scarcely restorative.

Of the firm opinion that Ibsen's plays call for some re-
writing and re-editing and that she is the one to do it,
Miss Le Gallienne, as in the case of John Gabriel Bork-
man last season, has volunteered her talents to Ghosts,
with results that approach the bizarre. "When I visited
Oslo in 1938," she says, "I was honored with a first edition
of Ghosts. Thumbing the pages of the Norwegian script

276 Ghosts

[no language, apparently, Is beyond Miss Le Gallienne's
facile grasp] I was awed and amazed by the easy flowing
dialogue that had vitality, spontaneity, wit and humor so
sadly lacking in the translation o William Archer. . . .
It is not, as classicists are apt to believe [may one ask what
classicists?], stiff, ponderous, and replete with symbolism.
In adapting Ibsen from the original Norwegian, I have
brought it up to date. People speak in everyday speech,
unadorned by pompous phrases of Victorian vintage/'

That Archer's translation of the in its time remarkable
play is at least in part what Miss Le Gallienne describes it
as being (one doubts, among other things, its sad lack of
vitality) , is to be freely admitted. But that Miss Le Gal-
lienne's version of the -play, while grantedly a little more
fluid to the contemporary ear, any more assists it is some-
thing less than an open question. To bring the speech of
a drama of sixty-seven years ago and one laid toward
the end of the nineteenth century and concerned with
problems and points of view peculiar to its immediate pe-
riod into a present day flavor is not only to make the
play at times slightly fatuous but to emphasize to its dam-
age its thematic age. When, in this later era of immediate
diagnosis and penicillin and fever therapy, it is hoped to
invest the once startling subject of syphilis with a current
and equal startle by substituting for Archer's Victorian
speech dialogue full of such terms and expressions as "let
yourself go," "aren't I?" and "bitch" when such is the
fond indulgence, the subject matter, far from being made
approximately modern, is made only to seem doubly dated.
It avails little to name an old horse-car Buick.

I suppose, however, that, in view of what Miss Le Gal-
lienne in the past has done to other of the classics, we
should be grateful that she has not seen fit to perform even
further upon the script. It seems to me that Ibsen remains
a dramatist whom you either take as he was or leave strictly
alone. But should Miss Le Gallienne in inevitably still
another production of Ghosts increasingly think other-
wise, I suggest that she go much farther than her present
improvement upon him. Always one to fee of help, I give

February 16, 1948 277

her a suggestion in brief outline. Why not change the
scene to Connecticut, keep the orphanage from burning,
and convert its barn-like structure into a summer theatre
with Mrs. Alving as manager? Through his loving mother's
influence, Oswald is given a place in its acting company,
since she feels that the occupation will take his already
tottering mind off itself. But, instead and to her woe, the
orphanage-bairn theatre acting and production drive the
sensitive artistic soul of her poor son so crazy that he ends
up, as the last curtain falls, crying for the Sun and its crit-
ic's notices on his performances.

The final tragk irony of it all is bound to exercise its
spell over a New York audience, since it will appreciate
that Mr. Morehouse is usually off shooting buffaloes in
the summer season and does not review the rural play-
houses.

Not merely a proficient but a superlative performance
is necessary to provoke interest, apart from the historical
and scholarly, in any present production of a play like
Ghosts, and this one, except for the Oswald of Alfred
Ryder, gets not even a faintly proficient one. Miss Le Gal-
lienne's Mrs. Alving is much less acting in any real defini-
tion of the term than a recitation of the role. The recita-
tion is a clear and intelligent one, and hints that she has a
profitable career open to her as a platform reader of the
classics; the women's clubs should welcome her like a sis-
ter. But what she presents on a dramatic stage is merely a
lesson studiously learned and projected as a lesson. Of
characterization there is nothing; and of acting nothing
beyond a fist pounded into a palm to suggest determina-
tion, hands suddenly clasped to the sides of the head to
register troubled concern, and a hand abruptly extended
palm upward to indicate everything from solicitude to en-
treaty and from skepticism to resignation. When she is
not speaking and has to sit aside whilst other characters
are, she disappears from the stage completely; there is no
sense of her presence; she seems to have done her little act
and to be resting outside the play until again called upon.
Her speaking voice is a good and agreeable one, but over-

278 Ghosts

all she gives, as heretofore, the impression of a dish of ar-
ticulate ice-cream.

Robert Emhardt's Engstrand needs only a touch of Irish
accent to fit handsomely into John Bull's Other Island.
Herbert Berghofs Manders, both in makeup and stridor,
belongs in a burlesque show version of The Passing Of
The Third Floor Back. And Jean Hagen's Regina seems
to have come out of the summer stock company which
drove Oswald out of his mind. Add all this together, sup-
plement it with Miss Le Gallienne's effort to dovetail the
First Mrs. Fraser with the first Mrs. Alving, and adorn it
further with invertebrate direction by Margaret Webster,
and you begin to savor the picture.

On the general question of acting, and on Miss Le Gal-
lienne's in particular, I should like to quote from a letter
written to the New York Times by the Russian actor,
Boris Marshalov:

Recent disputes about the Anglo-Saxon "restraint" and
the European "over-acting" remind one of the anecdotal
query: ''Which is more correct to say "ingnoramus" or
"engnoramus?" When actors restrain the emptiness in-
side of them they are just as boring as the ones who throw
at the audiences that same emptiness as so many colorful
bubbles. Good acting is the ability to express oneself
simply, naturally, sincerely, convincingly, but also color-
fully, interestingly and excitingly. It never is some of it;
it is all of it. When one goes horseback riding, one is not
satisfied with just the front of the horse or just the horse's
deniere.

Critical and public dissatisfaction caused the withdrawal
of the Ghosts production after a single week's engagement.

279

THE OLD LADY SAYS "NO!"
FEBRUARY 17, 1948

A fantasy by Denis Johnston. Produced by the Dublin
Gate Theatre under the auspices of Richard Aldrich and
Richard Myers in association with Brian Doherty for one
week's performances in the Mansfield Theatre.

PROGRAM

Micheal MacLiammoir
SARAH CURRAN Meriel Moore

MAJOR Snm Reginald Jarman

IST REDCOAT Bryan Herbert

2o REDCOAT Liam Gannon

Roy Irving
Edward Golden
Denis Brennan
Patrick Nolan

THEOXHER j WHUamDalzeU
ONES } Nora O'Mahony

Helena Hughes
Betsy Bogues
Patricia Kennedy
Edna O'Rourke

SYNOPSIS: The action of this play takes place on the stage of a
Dublin theatre; the time is the present. The opening scene represents the
garden of "The Priory" the home of John Philpot Curran, dose to Rath-
farnham, Dublin, on the night of 25th August, 1803. The rest of the play
takes place in the mind of The Speaker.

Director: Hilton Edwards.

I

.T is, I am told, sometimes bruited of me that I am
diced in favor of the Irish drama, which, all things con-
sidered, is like accusing me or anyone else of being preju-
diced in favor of freshly cooked food as against left-overs
pulled out of the icebox. Ireland, it seems to me, has for
some years now been the only country whose playwrights
in the aggregate, whether successfully or in failure, have
indicated any real gesture toward dramatic imagination,
dramatic-literary quality, and contempt for easy popu-
larity. Some of their plays have been very bad (the recent
Kathleen was just one horrible example) ; some have been
faWy acceptable^ or better; some have been grantecfly
among the masterpieces o our day and age. But whatever

280 The Old Lady Says "Nor

they have been, they have with minor exception at least
tried to swing over drama the lamp of poetry and beauty
and to sprinkle it with a little of the dust of stars.

The man in the advertisements who sat down at the
piano has not tempted any louder laughter than those of
us who, for what seems a considerable time, have felt that
way about things. And among the loudest cacklers have
been the majority of our local producers and their sub-
servient sheep. It is the humor of these that has kept from
our stage all the new works of the matchless O' Casey and
all the new imagery of a dreaming Dunsany and almost all
the later efforts of their more accomplished countrymen,
and for the greater part has blessed us instead with scrim
backdrop fancy, tin-horn realism, and potential movie
screen fare.

It has accordingly been a pleasure to have this Dublin
company pay us a visit and afford us a glimpse for a change
of some of its native writing. In the case of the play under
consideration, by the author of the admirable The Moon
In The Yellow River,, it would be comfortably jolly for
me if I could jump onto my little bandwagon and shout,
"See, I told you so; here is another Irish masterpiece, writ-
ten all of eighteen years ago, which the American stage has
spurned!" But, such is the mean trick the theatre occasion-
ally plays on me, I am afraid that I will not be able to do
it. The play is no masterpiece. But it is nonetheless an ex-
citing adventure in the theatre; it is far and away the most
imaginative play seen here in some time; it touches the
hem of radiance and wonder; and over-all it brings to a
stage worn and tired and feeble a renewed life and a re-
newed challenge. And it does not stand the ghost of a
chance to make a nickel in this theatre of ours as that
theatre presently stands.

The story, in the first place, which deals with an actor
who suffers an injury to his head while playing the role of
the idealistic patriot, Robert Emmet, and who in his de-
lirium moves despairingly through the chzyos and corrup-
tion of the modern Irish spirit, is confusing to the local
mind. It moreover in the telling a& racmeats/ confuses it-

February 17, 1948 281

self, and now and then is repetitious. It is also a bit too
long, and it descends here and there from its purple
heights into the gully of relatively damp expression. But
all the same and with all its slips it remains a proud and
brilliant effort, and it was to be recommended to those
few remaining theatregoers amongst us who still view the
stage as Shaw viewed it and its critics. "But there really
was something to roar at this time/' he wrote. "There was
a real play . , and for me, at least, there was a confirma-
tion of my sometimes flagging faith that a dramatic critic
is really the servant of a high art, and not a mere adver-
tiser of entertainments of questionable respectability of
motive."

What Johnston has set himself to do is to evolve a dra-
matic pattern based on the principles of musical composi-
tion. Though his attempt goes sometimes awry, the tech-
nical plan comes through save for an incorporated scherzo,
treating of the dilettante element in present day Dublin,
which has the effect of violating the preceding and subse-
quent movements. What he has further set himself to
capture in the direction of technique is, to quote his
spokesman, the mixing of all the elements in his story in a
nightmare's cauldron. "The Old Lady who says 'No!' be-
comes a caustic vision of modern Ireland, a degraded Kath-
leen ni Houhlihan, and is confused in the mind of Emmet,
her lover, with Sarah Curran (his sweetheart) and with
Beatrice whose image haunted Dante in his journey
through die infernal regions; with the fulfillment of his
own soul; and with the discovery of the secrets of life and
death." The characters, we are reminded, are not so much
individuals as general types, symbols of ideas or attitudes.
And the dramaturgical plan lies somewhere between a kind
of Greek choral tragedy and a modern farcical satire. The
undertones are those of Joyce and Freud, the overtones
those of O'Casey and Yeats. The result is now and again
a little perplexing; so much is piled upon so much; but
the final impression is of a play in which the sun strikes
through the clouds much more often than the clouds ob-
scure it

282 The Old Lady Says "No!"

The direction meets ably the difficulties imposed upon
It; the choral business is handled with an uncommon pro-
ficiency; and the acting company is at its best. The scenic
backgrounds, however, are at cheap fault.

Only a small portion of the local critical reaction to the
play was favorable. In larger degree, the verdicts were ex-
pressed in such terms as "doggedly chaotic and often very
dull,'* "pretty cumbersome and steadily untheatrical,"
"gives you the willies,'* "a dismal center of disappoint-
ment/' "tedious and exasperating,'* and "it is as difficult
to sit through as it is to read through Joyce's Ulysses. Both
are confusion rampant. Both send you to commentators
who think they know what the shooting is all about and
are not backward in explaining it to you. You can have
our share of both." As to the confusion hi understanding
the play, I like Mr. Kronenberger's "As for understanding
every bit of it, it is far less of a misfortune not to know
what a play is all about than to know what it is all about
within the first four minutes."

What our theatre seems to want, in brief, is not any such
valorous drama, any such attempt to reach up into the
boughs of imagination and poetry, but rather merely good,
loud, rough laugh shows like Mister Roberts*, whereon I
quote from the tributes of the same reviewers quoted
above: "A magnificent drama,'* "a moving drama that no
one who witnesses it will soon forget," "everything which
is wonderful about the theatre," "a salty and grand play,"
"a play that held me on my chair's edge, laughing out-
rageously with tears behind the laughter/' "among the
finest/' and "a triumphant example of drama."

Page Mr. Shaw.

283

MISTER ROBERTS. FEBRUARY 18, 1948

A play by Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan based on
the novel of the same title by Heggen. Produced by Leland
Hayward for the rest of the season's performances in the
Alvin Theatre.

PROGRAM

CHIEF JOHNSON Rusty Lane

LIEUTENANT (JG) ROBERTS

Henry Fonda
Doc
DOWDY
THE CAPTAIN
INSIGNA
MANNION
LINDSIHOM

STEFANOWSKT
WILEY

ScHLEMMER

Robert Keith
Joe Marr
Wfltiam Harrigan
Harvey Lambeck
Ralph Meeker
Karl Lukas
Steven HUl
Robert Baines
LeeRrieger

John Campbell

David Wayne

Casey Walters

Fred Barton

James Sherwood

REBER

ENSIGN PULVER

DOLAN

GERHART

PAYNE

LIEXTT. ANN GIRARD Jocelyn Brando

SHORE PATROLMAN John Jordan

MILITARY POLICEMAN

Marshall Jamison
SHORE PATROL OFFICER

Murray Hamilton

SYNOPSIS; Scene: Aboard the U. S. Navy Cargo Ship, AK 601,
operating in the back areas of the Pacific. Time: A few weeks before
V-E Day until a few weeks before V-J Day.

Director: Joshua Logan.

W

fin

HILE ON THE ROAD previous to its New York appear-
ance, the play was heralded in terms only slightly less hys-
terical than those which half a dozen years before had
touted the approach o the Ringling Brothers* Gargantua.
Unlike Gargantua, who turned out to be no invigorating
man-eater but a monkey so docile that he had to be fed
quarts of vodka to induce him to make even moderately
ferocious faces at the customers, it is found to be a spund
attraction. It is, true, contrary to what we had been led to
believe was ari exalted specimen of ars dramatica* worthy
of the ecstasies of the higher criticism, scarcely anything in
that line. But, purely as a theatrical show and nothing
else, it is bawdily amusing stuff, admirably directed by
Joshua Logan, excellently acted by a cast headed by Henry

284 Mister Roberts

Fonda, David Wayne, Robert Keith and William Harri-
gan, and aptly designed by Jo Mielziner.

Laid on a Navy cargo ship operating during the late
war in the back areas o the Pacific far from the scenes of
battle, it portrays the effect of the long and deadly monot-
ony on the members of the crew and centers on the des-
perate efforts of one of the ship's officers to get away and
into action, with the troubles he encounters both with
the captain and his shipmates who misunderstand his mo-
tives. The language is tough, the humor Restoration-plus,
and the resulting hilarity loud. So much for that. When,
however, it comes to analyzing the proceedings, which is
about as gratuitous as analyzing a burlesque show or a
pretty and amusing girl, the findings are not entirely so
congenial. My personal acquaintance with life in the Navy
is scarcely profound and has been confined largely to a
single experience in my youth with Navy Plug Cut, which
I may say was not conducive to inspiring in me any over-
whelming desire to become a part of it. But, while I ac-
cordingly am happy to leave the intimacies of the subject
to those who know more about them, I can not resist the
impression that the play itself is often very much like A
Young Man's Fancy, or any other such boys* camp or
school play, gone to sea. It consists, in short, mostly in a
succession of more or less familiar schoolboy pranks, or
free adaptations thereof, performed by men with bare
chests dripping glycerine sweat and to the accompaniment
of the language commonly identified with sailors, and in-
terrupted periodically by the equally familiar plot of the
boy (in this case a naval lieutenant junior grade) whom
the other boys suspect of something or other but who
eventually proves himself to be as good as gold. All that
is missing from the fundamental picture are the school
pennants, together with the inevitable "Visit Atlantic
City" one, on the cabin walls and the off-stage baseball or
football game.

Present, for example, are the episodes in which the boys
peer through binoculars at a distant window which re-
veals a girl taking a shower-bath, in which they concoct an

February 18, 1948 285

alcoholic tipple out of daffy ingredients, in which they
plan to place a large firecracker under the head-master's
(the captain's) bed, and in which they muss up his pet
palm plant. Also the ones in which they prepare for the
advent of a female by dolling up the room (the ship's
cabin) with sofa pillows bearing saucy legends, in which
they return from a party with clothes disarranged and still
obviously under the influence of drink, in which they dis-
cuss their amorous relations, or their hopes for them, with
the girls, and in which one of the boys after a fight shows up
with a black eye and minus his apparel. Also, as well, the
ones in which the boys, who have been loafing, pretend
upon the captain's sudden appearance to be deeply en-
grossed in their work, in which they pull out from under
the covers on their beds various forbidden, secreted arti-
cles, in which they outwit the police officer who comes to
make trouble for them, etc.

In another direction, the show provides the standard
scenes in which the boy wrongly thought by the others to
be guilty of something manfully sticks to the word of
honor he has given another and remains silent in the face
of the accusations; in which his loyal friend who is privy
to the facts sets his lips tightly in his temporary inability
to help him out of his predicament; in which his friends,
at last understanding, gather sentimentally to bid him
farewell and present him with a small token of their affec-
tion which they have fashioned out of their meagre re-
sources; and the later reading of a letter which brings the
sad news that their hero has been killed in action. The
language throughout, as already intimated, embraces a con-
stant employment of such terms as "bastard" and "son-of-a-
bitch," which are doubtless authentic enough, and the
general dialogue flavor is reflected in some such line as that
describing the captain's award of a small palm tree "for de-
livering more toothpaste and toilet paper than any other
Navy cargo ship in the safe area of the Pacific," along with
the one properly to be anticipated in any exhibit dealing
with sailors, "There's only one thing you ever thought
about for a half hour in your life."

286 Mister Roberts

Nevertheless, if you are not given to such objectionable
prying, the whole, to repeat, constitutes a lively and en-
tertaining show, with enough sex added to it to persuade
an audience that it is not essentially a schoolboy play at
all, but a realistic picture of life aboard a ship in the
United States Navy. And, unlike The Old Lady Says
"Not", it will unquestionably make a fortune.

287

TONIGHT AT 8:30. FEBRUARY *o, 1948

A revival of a series of six short plays by Noel Coward.
Produced by Homer Curran, Russell Lewis and Howard
Young for 26 performances in the National Theatre.

CAST

Gertrude Lawrence, Graham Payn, Philip Tonge, Norah Howard, Valerie
Cossart, Sarah Burton, Rhoderick Walker, William Roerick, and Booth
Colman.

Director: Noel Coward.

M,

LR. COWARD'S SUCCESS in the light-minded theatre is
largely predicated on three diligently rehearsed and even
more diligently executed capers. The first is a fancily su-
perior contempt for the standard morality made accept-
able to the laity by airing it through characters who bear
only the faintest resemblance to normal human beings
and whose dicta are therefore as amusedly tolerated as
are those, say, of politicians on ethics. The second is the
trick of passing off a calculated impertinence for wit by
lodging it in the mouths of glossily dressed characters and
directing it to be spoken in fastidious accents through
elevated noses. The third is an abstinence from any pos-
sible intelligence and an evasion of the dran^atic conse-
quences by whimsicaHy deprecating what remote symp-
toms of it the characters may seem to ventilate.

That Mr. Coward is a shrewd and clever artisan is ob-
vious; and I am no more reflecting on his shrewdness and
cleverness than I would presume to reflect on the same at-
tributes in a watch repairer who triumphantly persuades
qne that the main-spring is broken, convincingly holds the
^atch for dyree weeks, and then puts a couple of drops of
qijt into the works and charges one ten dollars. Such things
require a virtuosity, of sorts, and when it comes to getting
^way with tlie few drops of oil Mr. Coward is one of the
very best in the business. But to regard him at all seriously

288 Tonight at 8:30

as a dramatist is, I suspect, a pleasure reserved to oil-drop
criticism. Whenever he has defiantly ventured beyond the
minor cocktail and cigarette drama and beyond the chichi
and frou-frou aspects of character, he has found himself
still up to his neck in the old adhesive marshmallow ic-
ing. For his tricks are alien to an interpretation of life in
any of its more important phases and what he has to
bring to the job is merely the familiar silk hat with a false
bottom, but minus any rabbit.

In his own little field, however, he has had fairer worldly
fortune and he has amply deserved it, considering the de-
light he has given in his role of clown performing for
audiences of crippled children. That that performance is a
professional one is scarcely to be doubted. Since those audi-
ences in considerable degree are composed of people given
to the aggressively fashionable life, he is experienced
enough in that quarter to realize, for example, that, despite
the cynical view of those who are no part of it, what is re-
ferred to as the set's small talk at least makes a little sense,
whereas its efforts at talk of even slightly greater bulk
make none whatever. And it is such small talk that he ac-
cordingly and not without sagacity implants in his dipsy-
doodle characters.

His acquaintance with humanity, though apparently
gained at some distance, has also imbued him with other
equally heady concepts which he has embroidered into
prosperous theatrical fare. Having concluded, for instance,
that love as demonstrated by most of its victims consists
only in a coincidental inflammation of dormant senti-
ment and a suspension of active intelligence, he leaves
any further investigation of it to his playwriting colleagues
and engages himself aloofly to treat of it as of a piece with
nibbling a contaminated violet. Having also deduced that
men go to the theatre to forget and women to remember,
he profitably flatters both with the deception of female
characters who contrarily forget and males who remember.

Nor does his immense ingenuity stop there. Privy to the
fact that little is more discommodious to the patience of

February 20, 1948 289

the type of audience he attracts than lengthy dialogue
speeches possessed of some literary distinction, he gives
his characters the kind of monosyllabic utterance favored
by inarticulate foreigners attempting English for the first
time. The result is such discourse as "How d'you feel?"
"Frightful/' "So do I." "Good!" which, while it may im-
press others as indicative of the intercourse of half-wits, is
revelled in as the height of smartness by his swank, verb-
ally bankrupt admirers. He further appreciates that, with
his special clientele, it is risky to go too far in meritorious
epigrammatic expression and that it is better to keep it
on an amateur and easily digestible level. The result in
turn is such eligible scintillations as "Being married to
eminence requires a little forbearance, especially if the
eminence is dear to you"; "Pangs of conscience are tire-
some; they're also exceedingly bad for you"; and "The
dead at least have the sense to be quiet."

There is also the matter of what our French friends
call ton. Mr. Coward, when it comes to ton, is as high-
toned as a calliope. Not high-toned, that is, in the manner
of a Sheridan, Wilde, Pinero or any other such dandy, but
rather in that of a boutonniere on a pajama top. His plays
beam with "members of the Country Club," Samolan
boys in silver earrings and bracelets serving trays of drinks,
"insufferable cads," allusions to exclusive restaurants,
"lovely creatures exquisitely dressed and with great charm
of manner," gaudy butlers and valets, catalogues of the
more recherch ocean liners and dukes, "gloomy dinners
at the Embassy," and characters who collapse wearily on
sofas. And in the promotion of the tone, the dialogue is
enriched with endlessly ejaculated "too utterlys," "too
fantastics," "terribly drearys," "frightfully embarrassings,"
and "how terrifyings."

While such Fauntleroy adventures in Wildeana may
rank with criticism not materially above the average musi-
cal show book, they nevertheless, as has been s recorded,
rank high in the estimation of the kind of audiences who
regard a strict mental and literary dtiet as vital to the

290 Tonight at 8:30

health of comedy and who view as an affront to polite post-
dinner theatregoing anything o more depth than a finger-
bowL Mr. Coward well knows the people he has to sell
and gives them the finger-bowls they want, now with a
rose petal, now with a slice of lemon, and then again
merely neat. But it always remains the same finger-bowl,
filled with tepid water.

Sometimes, while the vessel is being served, he supplies
a little music, which no end tickles his guests' vanity in
their clever recognition of it as warmed-over Grieg, Puc-
cini or Lehar. Sometimes, there is the fillip of a little
saucy conversation, usually of an eccentric sexual nature,
made comfortable to the select company by couching it
in serio- travesty speech. And sometimes, by way of cajol-
ing his guests into imagining that the finger-bowl is the
Thames, with Maugham punting on it, he goes to the
length of describing his characters partly for the human
caricatures they are. But in the end what it all amounts to
is still only the small receptable for fingertip dipping in
the midst of such snazzy chitchat as "Prince and Princess
Jean Marie de Larichon have left the Hotel George Cinq
en route for the Riviera/*

The revived short plays, both light and serious, are
Ways And Means, Family Album, Red Peppers, Shadow
Play, Fumed Oak, and Hands Across The Sea. Their es-
sential nature may be limned in a few strokes:

Ways And Means. "The scene is a bedroom in the
Lloyd-Ransomes' home, Villa Zephyre, on the Cote d'Azur/"
Dialogue sample:

Stella: Here's a letter from Aunt Hester.
Toby: Is she well and hearty?
Stella: Apparently,
Toby: To hell with her.

Family Album. "The music plays softly; an under-cur-
rent to grief." Dialogue sample:

Emily? It lias stopped raining,

Richard: Not quite, Emily, but it is certainly clearing.

February 20, 1948 291

Lavinia: It was fitting that it rained today. It has been a sad

day and rain became it.
Jasper: True, very true.
Jane: A little sunshine would have been much pleasanter

nevertheless.

Red Peppers. Samples of the vaudeville characters' dia-
logue:

George: What's the matter with my singing?

Lily: What isn't the matter with it!

George: Don't you think I could ever do anything with my

voice?
Lily: Well, it might be useful in case of fire.

Bert: What's wrong with my orchestra?

Lily: Nothing, apart from the instruments and the men

what play 'em.

Shadow Play. Consult foregoing general description of
its author.

Fumed Oak. Theme: Vide W. S. Maugham's The
Breadwinner. Dialogue samples:

Doris: Pity you don't go and live with Nora for a change.

Mrs. Rockett: Nora hasn't got a spare room.

Doris: Phyllis has, a lovely one, looking out over the rail-
way. I'm sure her hot-water pipes wouldn't annoy you,
there isn't hot water in them.

Henry: Stop ordering me about. What right have you got to
nag at me and boss me? I'm the one that pays the rent
and works for you and keeps you.

Hands Across The Sea. "The scene is the drawing-room
of the Gilpins* flat in London." Samples of dialogue:

Piggie: Marvellous. You're axi angel, Ally I must take ofi
these clothes, I'm going jnad -* ."

292 Tonight at 8:30

Walters: Her ladyship is changing. Ill tell her you are here.
Mrs. Wadhurst: Thank you,
Mr. Wadhurst: Thank you very much.

Bogey: Cocktail?
Clare: Thank God!

Piggie: You'd better come and dine tonight I'm on a diet,
so there's only spinach, but we can talk

And in over-all Joycean stream:

"Beastly ... so charming it's positively nauseating . . .
The Fenwicks will be arriving to play golf in a minute . . .
There isn't always music, and moonlight . . . You rang,
madame? Make a cocktail, will you, Ernest, a dry Martini.
Very good, madame . . . Bring some fresh cocktails, Ernest.
#es, madame . . . Oh, it was all horrid; he was much older
than me; very rich, fortunately; we went to Italy, Como first
and then Venice, it was lovely * . . But charm, that's what
counts, darling . . . Have you finished with the cocktail
things, madame? . . . You're so foolish up on your roman-
tic high horse how often have you ridden it wildly until
it went lame and you had to walk home . . . That's what
made the sadness in your eyes . . . Have you had many
lovers? . . . You've been married twelve years. How naive
you are. . . . There's a little brooch between us, a little
brooch with emeralds and sapphires that someone gave to
Leonora years ago . . . Love is a very comprehensive term,
my sweet * . . How does it feel to be so desirable, to be
wanted so much? . . . The Rawlingsons, who the hell are
they? . . . Frightfully, my sweet, frightfully . . . Why don't
you have them down for the weekend? Don't be so idiotic.
They probably wouldn't have the right clothes . . . Let's
have a drink. Cocktail? No, a long one, whisky and soda
... I recognize her from the Taller; she was Lady Hurstley,
you know, &en she was Lady MacFadden ... I do hope
Lady Dalborough will be here * . . SheV the niece of the

February 20, 1948 293

Duke of Frensham, her mother was Lady Merritt . . . Mix
a cocktail, Bogey, I'm a stretcher case . . , Give me another
cocktail, Piggie, I want to get so drunk that I just can't hear
any more . . . Are you going to Nina's Indian ding-dong?
... So tiresome, so terribly, hideously tiresome, my sweet
. . . Are you happy with that cocktail or would you rather
have tea? ... I adored Wally, he was a darling . . . Give
me a cocktail, I haven't had one at all yet and I'm exhausted
. . . Oh, my God, that was the most awful half an hour I've
ever spent . . . Come on, Ally, I've got to dress . . . You
know perfectly well I hate Freda's guts . . . Oh, goodbye,
it's been absolutely lovely ... It isn't the money, it's the
lack of consideration, my sweet ... I knew marrying you
was a mistake at least seven years ago but I never realized
the thoroughness of the mistake until now . . . You will be
interested to hear that Mrs. S. J. Pendleton gave a small din-
ner party for Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Weir at the Hotel Nor-
mandie in Le Touquet last night . . . Elena's splashed her-
self from head to foot with the last precious drops of my
scent this morning . . . Among the guests were Lord and
Lady Haven, the Countess Pantulucci . , . How thrilling!
. . . Something really humiliating, like being sick at a Court
Ball . . . It's insufferable. . . . Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Al-
ford have returned from Vichy and are staying at the Cril-
lon, they are to be joined in a few days by Mrs. Alford's sis-
ter, Lady Croker ... A little Madeira, Emily? . . . Mr.
and Mrs. Toby Cartwright have left the Villa Zephyre under
a cloud . . . Bon jour, Gaston . . . My merriment is en-
tirely a social gesture . . . Backgammon, seven thousand
francs . . . It's the most awful bore, my sweet ... I loved
Dimitri dreadfully; do you mind if I take a little of your
scent? . . . We're going up to Venice to lunch . . . Don't
be silly, darling, we've overstayed frightfully but we were
having such a lovely time . . . The car will be waiting for
you at twelve-thirty ... I do feel so horrid about it ...
Go into Cannes this afternoon and pop them . . . It's mad-
ness, stark, staring madness ... Is there no justice in the
universe? Absolutely none, dear, I remember remarking that
to Nanny only the other day when the stopper came out of

294 Tonight at 8:30

my nail varnish . . . She appears to have been a mean old
bitch ... It seems a pity that you can't turn your devastat-
ing wit to a more commercial advantage; you should write
a gossip column . . . She sleeps alone, you know; Irving is
separated from her by the bathroom; it would be deliciously
easy . . . My poor sweet! . . , Get into bed, darling 1
you're beastly to me, I'll yell the place down . . . Stella, be
quiet, your behavior is in the worst possible taste . . . Have
you gone mad? . . . Touche, Jasper ... As you say, Lawy,
but my throat is cruelly dry . . . You shock me appallingly,
Emily, I'm almost sure you do ... It was a waltz, of course
it was, don't you recall it, my dear, we danced to it years
later, at a ball . . . You rang, Mr. Jasper? . . . The Due
and Duchesse de Fauchois are at the Meurice with . . ."

The felicitous Miss Lawrence, as heretofore, shone in
the leading feminine roles of the plays and was supported
by an in the main competent company. It was the general
critical opinion, however, that Graham Payn was not
suited to the parts played originally by Mr. Coward. It is
my personal opinion that the general critical opinion was
correct. Mr. Payn, though a very commendable performer,
enjoys an unmistakable masculinity that scarcely harmo-
nizes with the falsetto tone of the Coward characters.

The speedy failure of the enterprise possibly pointed
to the unthinkable thought that Mr. Coward's long hold
on his admirers may be waning, or, even more unthink-
ably, that his admirers have grown up a bit.

295

WHERE STARS WALK. FEBRUARY 24, 1948

A fantasy by Micheal MacLiammoir. Produced by the
Dublin Gate Theatre company under the auspices of
Richard Aldrich and Richard Myers in association with
Brian Doherty for 2 week's performances in the Mansfield
Theatre.

PBOGHAM

SOPHIA. SHERIDAN Meriel Moore
ROBERT TWOMEY Denis Brennan
REX DILLON Boy Irving

TOMMY MHXINGTON

Edward Golden

SHEELA McCANN Patricia Kennedy
MRS. DEMPSEY Nora O'Mahony
EILEEN Helena Hughes

MARTIN Micheal MacLiammoir
NIGEL BRUNTON Norman Barrs

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place in Sophia Sheri-
dan's house in Dublin at the present day. Act I. A night in April. Act II.
The next morning. Act III. The last night in April.

Director: Hilton Edwards.

I

,T SEEMS TO ME that what playgoers denounce as destruc-
tive criticism is sometimes confined very much less to the
incriminated critics than to the playgoers themselves. The
critics* destructiveness has as its object such plays, pro-
ducers and performers as are inimical to the health and
progress of the theatre. Its purpose is to prevent the spread
of plague by isolating the infected. The destructive criti-
cism at times demonstrated by the playgoers, and which
consists in resolutely remaining away from plays and pro-
ductions of merit, on the other hand contributes to the
theatre's decline and opens it up to further mediocrity,
thus only making the critics do double duty in their efforts
to curtail the pox.

The local failure of the worthy Dublin Gate company,
of its worthy aims and of two of its worthy presentations
is accordingly to be laid not so much to any destructive
opinion they suffered from the in this case lapsed mer-
chants of criticism as to the playgoers who, for all their
gepsure of them, seem nevertheless docilely to follow them,

296 Where Stars Walk

and who by their absence helped to bring misfortune to
the visitors' earlier ventures.

When it comes to this third and last offering, however,
neither the critics nor the playgoers were to blame, at least
in the destructive quarter described. Most of the former
were rather to be blamed for seeming to discern excel-
lences in it that were not visible to any other eye, and most
of the latter were to be complimented on not following
them, for a change. Though Mr. MacLiammoir's play tries
hard to achieve the strange beauty implicit in much of the
drama of his countrymen, it achieves instead only some-
thing that, in view of its occasional similarity to the Car-
roll play, might well have been called Shadow Without
Substance. It mistakes a round candy box for the moon,
and its flights of imagination too often are grounded by
engine trouble. The acting and direction, moreover, were
on this occasion so consistently stock that the playwright's
weaknesses were unassisted by anything in the way of
crutches. And, incidentally, one more play about the old
Irish gods and goddesses and kings, unless it be written by
a dramatist of real gifts, will find me, in case anyone is
looking for me, in the nearest bar.

Mr. MacLiammoir has taken for his theme the verse by
Yeats:

how a Princess Edain,

A daughter of a King of Ireland, heard
A voice singing on a May eve like this,
And followed, half awake and half asleep,
Until she came to the land of Faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
And she is still there, busied with a dance
Deep in the dewy shadow of a wood
Or where stars walk upon a mountain top.

With this as the key, he brings into the house of an ac-
tress in Dublin in the present day two servants who are
the reincarnations of the Edain and Midhir of Irish legend,

February 24, 1948 297

the one the daughter of an old king, the other her trans-
cendental wooer in the old misty line. The actress at the
moment is rehearsing a play in which the twain figure and
is given to operating a planchette board to communicate
with their spirits. The two figures renew their courtship
between their menial duties, make their mystical presence
felt by her to the larger comprehension and advantage of
the dramatic role she is to play, and eventually take their
departure from the earthly scene in the shape of swans.

That there is a fanciful play of sorts in the materials is
evident even from the crude outline, but Mr. MacLiam-
moir has failed to extract it. He has difficulty in dovetail-
ing the fanciful and the real; his fanciful is largely a mat-
ter of two players affecting set, far-away looks on then-
faces, reading their lines in that manufactured tremolo
which passes for a whimsical beyond-world quality, and
moving about with a wistful hesitation opposite to their
sprightly gait in the mundane scenes and all to an ob-
bligato of suddenly dimmed lights, a stage colored by off-
stage lavender gelatine slides, and hidden music. And his
contrasting real is merely poor drawing-room comedy, re-
plete with the customary whiskey decanters, telephone
calls, derisive remarks on the English, and observations on
the virginity or lack thereof in the female guests. There
are moments when his imagination seems about to tri-
umph over the stereotypes, but they are evanescent, and
the end impression is of two plays, neither satisfactory,
which have been pined together by a crooked tunnel
through which for the most part funnels only a damp,
precocious, poetasdrical wind.

That the aim here once again is elevated and that the
play in intention once again shames the deliberate com-
mercialism of so many of our American f writers for the
theatre is clear enough. But that it does not come off is
equally clear, which to a more sensitive critic than my-
self might in view of his earlier high remarks on the Irish
drama be a bit mortifying. In such junctures, a critic of
that species would have but one self-protective course open
to hitim y to wit, the rccb&rse to a trick well-known to sales-

298 Where Stars Walk

men of the critical art, which is the substantiation, in the
face of uncomfortable contrary evidence, of a previous
long and stoutly held opinion by the shrewd manipula-
tion of sophistry into at least a momentary semblance of
logic. That the resort to any such artifice is lamentable is
naturally not to be argued, yet it has been employed by
some of the otherwise best and most honorable critics the
world has known, and it has been surprisingly successful
in fooling all save the few more alert minds among their
readers, whose only retaliation has been the dispatching
of disgusted messages to the offenders which the latter, it
need not be said, have carefully kept from outside knowl-
edge and which hence have not embarrassed their stand-
ing in the slightest. I am, of course, so upright that I
would not deign to stoop to any such speciosity, but if I
were not I should probably proceed as follows:

What seems to be the faulty dovetailing of the two ele-
ments in Mr. MacLiammoir's play may, after all, be not
so faulty as appears to the casual critic, since the elements
in point may be regarded as separate movements, as in a
musical composition, and so be dramaturgically condoned.
This, of course, is bosh, but it has a fairly plausible sound.

Secondly, I should contend that, though the play deals
again with the Irish legendary gods, goddesses, kings and
princesses and deals with them in scarcely satisfactory dra-
matic-literary terms, the author at least brings a novel
touch of humor to the business and thus makes the old
stuff, despite its poor treatment, a little more palatable.
While this also may have a moderately convincing ring,
it is essentially bogus, since the humor, though present,
is not any more satisfactory than the dramatic-literary
terms.

Thirdly, it would be easy to argue that, whatever the de-
fects of such a play, it possesses the charm common to so
much of Irish drama. But just how a play so lacking in
general quality can have charm of any kind, I would be
careful not to explain.

Fourthly, I should pretend that the drawing-room ele-
ment in the play by its very routine nature tends to

February 24, 1948 299

heighten the fanciful, romantic element, and that the
routine nature was possibly deliberate on the part of the
playwright, which, obviously, is nonsense for all its super-
ficial reasonableness.

Fifthly

But I daresay you get the idea.

300

HEDDA GABLER. FEBRUARY 24, 1948

A revival of the play by Henrik Ibsen. Produced by Louis
]. Singer and the American Repertory Company for 2
weeks' performances in the Cort Theatre.

PROGRAM

Miss JuiiANA TESMAN

Marion G. Evensen
BERTA Merle Maddern

GEORGE TESMAN Robert Emhardt

MRS. ELVSTED Emily McNair

JUDGE BRACK Herbert Berghof

ElLERT LOVBORG

Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.

HEDDA TESMAN Eva Le GaUienne

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Drawing-room of Tesmans villa, in the west
end of Christiana. Morning. Act II. Scene 1. The same. Afternoon. Scene
2. The same. The follotving morning. Act III. The same. Evening.

Time: Early 1890's.

Director: Eva Le GaUienne.

AGAIN in the case of the ice skating shows, one re-
view of Miss Le Gallienne is perforce much like another.
The monotony of the former is matched by the monotony
of the lady's long, ambitious and manly but unsuccessful
efforts to establish herself as an acceptable actress. That
she is a completely sincere, hard-working, and extra-theat-
rically intelligent person is obvious. That she further has
conducted her career on no low level but has sought to do
the higher things in drama is similarly obvious. And that
she has, unmistakably*, been motivated by a commendable
desire to assist the theatre in every way within her small
means is not less so. But, and I believe that most of my
colleagues at last agree, her limitations as an actress are so
serious and her intelligence is so generally at theatrical
fault that her labors unfortunately seem bound to come to
little.

When I speak of Miss Le Gallienne as an actress, I use
the term only with the greatest liberality. What she is,
as I have often remarked before, is rather merely an expert

February 24, 1948 301

reciter of the roles in which she casts herself, with acting
in any strict definition no part of her performances. She
reads her lines well, but she does not dramatize them in
her person and seems unable to achieve character more
than half an inch below her vocal organs. She impresses
us, in short, as one who is letter-perfect at the first re-
hearsal of a play which is thereupon abandoned. She is,
in the second place, also possessed of so arctic a personality,
despite her attractiveness of face and figure, that her per-
formances take on the air of an Icetime Of 1948, minus
only such a show's proficiency and audience appeal. She
is so cold that a spectator is sometimes surprised that a
frosty mist does not issue from her mouth when she opens
it to speak her lines. And, thirdly, that chill is accompanied
always by one of the most damaging qualities in an actress,
which is the suggestion that her mind is constantly operat-
ing over rather than under her lines and is putting her
emotions in their place, with a whip. She should learn her
Rachel. "Think out your role thoroughly before the cur-
tain goes up," said that famous actress, "and then forget
everything and let go." Even in roles themselves intrinsi-
cally cold, like this Hedda, Miss Le Gallienne carries ice
to Newfoundland.

She additionally exploits herself too greatly in other
directions wherein her competences are doubtful. She sets
herself to adapt various classics to her personal advantage
as an actress and in the process rips much of their life from
them. She sets herself to direct plays, and her direction im-
parts to her fellow players either a share of her own re-
frigeration or here and there such a violently contrasting
heat that the stage seems to be occupied by a number of
firemen feverishly trying to put out a Frigidaire. And,
when serving in the capacity of her own producer, she al-
lows her conviction that she is gifted with histrionic versa-
tility to resolve itself into repertory programs which only
accentuate her shortcomings.

"I begin to have bopes of a great metropolitan vogue
for that lady How," Shaw once wrote ironically of Janet
Aetiurch after viewing her performance as Shakespeare's

302 Hedda Gabler

Cleopatra, "since she has at last done something that is
thoroughly wrong from beginning to end/' Were he to
have seen Miss Le Gallienne's Mrs. Alving and Hedda, he
would, I fear, have omitted fifty percent of the sentence.

There are several different justifiable ways to play
Hedda, but Miss Le Gallienne's is not, I feel, among them.
Connoisseurs of the absurd may, for example, recall with
delight her previous venture into the role some years ago
when she equipped it with a modern sports costume and
a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes, and further played it
as if Hedda had just stepped into it for a few minutes
from a Michael Arlen comedy and was on her impatient
way into one by Maugham. In this later interpretation
she does not permit her idiosyncrasies to go quite that far,
but she nevertheless gives every evidence of still accepting
too literally Grant Allen's nineteenth century view of
Hedda: "I take her into dinner twice a week," and of be-
lieving that the character is out of the pages of Town And
Country, that the Stork Club is situated just around the
corner from Tesman's house, and that Lovborg in some
ways resembles Don Ameche. In other words, her attempt
to invest the character with an approximate modernity
invests it only with caricature.

I appreciate that almost everyone has his prejudice as to
the one manner in which Hedda is best to be played and
that, for all the fact that I personally do not hold anything
of the kind and believe, as I have said, that there are sev-
eral ways in which the role may honestly be acted, I never-
theless will be charged by the reader with the single con-
ception. Very well, I accept. My idea of the way it should
be played is to play it for the greater part in exactly the
opposite way to the way Miss Le Gallienne plays it. Which
is to say to act its cold calculation into some projectional
warmth; to compose its artful deliberation not merely and
solely in features set into an expression which hints at a
paralysis of the facial muscles; to realize that under its
icy surface, as under all icy surfaces, there is fluidity, and
that that fluidity is not without some depth; and prac-
tically to dramatize the periodic absence of what is con-

February 24, 1948 303

ventionally called emotion not into a vacuum but into
something at least histrionically implicative.

One o Miss Le Gallienne's severest personal and pro-
fessional handicaps seems to be a lack of humor. It is, for
example, her periodic observation to interviewers, as it is
Miss Margaret Webster's, her associate in various produc-
tions, that she has little use for criticism of her endeavors
and that, accordingly, she does not elect to read what the
critics say of them. As one of the critics whom she does not
choose to read, I certainly have no criticism of her on that
score. But, though she says that she does not read criticism,
she seems in some occult way nevertheless to wax very
angry at what the critics whom she does not read have
written of her and her enterprises, as does also Miss Web-
ster, which, it may be allowed, is slightly puzzling even to
the more accomplished rebus addicts. I do not say that my
or anyone else's criticisms of her work would, if she read
them, be of benefit to Miss Le Gallienne, since she is
evidently altogether sure of herself as she is. But if she
were imaginably to read them and did not like them, it
would, I think, be advantageous to an acquisition of the
humor she presently lacks, and to consequent ingratiat-
ing publicity which she could stand, were she to profit by a
lesson from the late G. K. Chesterton.

Chesterton, though few of his admirers, I believe, are
aware of it, once essayed for an English provincial news-
paper the role of dramatic critic and proved himself very
apt at it. The occasion was a reply to the practising critics
of the time who had found fault with his venture into
dramaturgy, the play called Magic. Since it has never to
my knowledge been printed in this country, I here quote
from it at some length* in the conviction that it should
prove instructive to those of our American playwrights
like Maxwell Anderson, Clifford Odets, et aL, who have
worked themselves into a mighty indignation and rancor
when critics have similarly found fault with their exhibits
as well as, obliquely, to actresses like this Miss Le Gal-
lienne.

"The author of Magic" wrote Chesterton, "ought to be

304 Hedda Gabler

told plainly that his play, like most other efforts of that
person, has been treated with far too much indulgence in
the public press. I will glide mercifully over the more
glaring errors which the critics have overlooked as that
no Irishman could become so complete a cad merely by
going to America; that no young lady would walk about
in the rain so soon before it was necessary to dress for din-
ner; that no young man, however American, could run
around a duke's grounds in the time between one bad
epigram and another; that dukes never allow the middle
classes to encroach on their gardens so as to permit a doc-
tor's lamp to be seen there; that no sister, however eccen-
tric, could conduct a slightly frivolous love scene with a
brother going mad in the next room; that the secretary
disappears half-way through the play without explaining
himself; and that the conjuror disappears at the end with
almost equal dignity. Such are the candid criticisms I
should address to Mr. G. K. Chesterton were he my friend.
But as I have always found him my worst enemy, I will
confine myself to the criticism which seems to me most
fundamental and final.

"Of course, I shall not differ from any of the dramatic
critics: I am bursting with pride to think that I am (for
the first time) a dramatic critic myself. Besides, I never
argue except when I am right. It is rather a curious coinci-
dence that in every controversy in which I have been
hitherto I have always been entirely right. But if I pre-
' tended for one moment that Magic was not a badly writ-
ten play, I should be entirely wrong. I may be allowed to
point out the secret of its badness.

"By the exercise of that knowledge of all human hearts
which descends on any man (however unworthy) the
moment he is a dramatic critic, I perceive that the author
of Magic originally wrote it as a short story. It is a bad
play because it was a good short story. In a short story of
mystery, as in a Sherlock Holmes story, the author and the
hero (or villain) keep the reader out of the secret. Conan
Doyle and Sherlock Holmes know all about it; and every-
body else feels as silly as Watson. But the drama is built

February 24, 1948 305

on that grander secrecy which was called the Greek irony.
In the drama the audience must know the truth when the
actors do not know it. That is where the drama is truly
democratic; not because the audience shouts, but be-
cause it knows and is silent. Now I do quite seriously
think it is a weakness in a play like Magic that the audi-
ence is not in the central secret from the start. Mr. G. S.
Street put the point with his usual unerring simplicity
by saying that he could not help feeling disappointed with
the conjuror because he had hoped he would turn into the
devil. If any one knows any real answer to this genuine
and germane criticism, I will see that it is conveyed to the
author.

"There are two more criticisms of which I will take
note, because they can best be dealt with by an impartial
critic like myself. The first concerns that paralysis of the
mind which scientists now call Pragmatism, and which is
represented in this play as freezing for an instant the in-
tellect of an Anglican priest. I know it is ignominious to
talk of artistic aims that aim and do not hit. But the idea
o the skepticism of the priest was perfectly simple. It was
that there should be no faith or fancy left to support the
supernatural, but only the experience of it. There is one
man who believes and he believes so strongly that he
wishes he didn't. . . .

"The other criticism which the present critic may criti-
cize is the frequent observation that a soliloquy is old-fash-
ioned and by *old-f ashioned' they always mean artificial
or unnatural. Now, I should say that a soliloquy is the most
natural thing in the world. It is no more artificial than a
conscience or a habit of walking about the room. I con-
stantly talk to myself. If a man does not talk to himself it
is because he is not worth talking to. Soliloquy is simply
the strength and liberty of the soul, without which each
man of us would be like that nobleman in one of the
most brilliant and bizarre of Mr. Henry James's tales who
did not exist at all except when others were present. Every
man ought to be able to argue with himself. And I have
tried to do it in this article/'

306

ME AND MOLLY. FEBRUARY 26, 1948

A comedy by Gertrude Berg. Produced by Oliver Smith.,
Paul Feigay and Herbert Kenwith in association with
David Cummings for the rest of the season's performances
in the Belasco Theatre.

PROGRAM

MAX

JOE

MRS. 2-c

HYMEE

BENJY

MJLTY

Henry Lascoe

Michael Enserro

Paula Mitter

Arthur Cassel
Charles Furman

Herbie Hahn

MOLLY GOLDBERG Gertrude Berg

UNCLE DAVID EUMintz

SAMMY GOUDBERG Lester Carr

ROSBE GOLDBERG Joan Lazer

MRS. SIEGEL Bertha Walden

JAKE GOLDBERG Philip Loeb

COUSIN SIMON Louis Sorin

MR- MENDEL David Opatoshu

VERA WERTHEIMER

Margaret Feury

PIANO MAN George Spelvin

MRS. GROSS Sarah Krohner

MIKE David Burke

MRS. 3-c Bessie Samose Blumstein
JESSIE Phyllis Liverman

MRS. ELLENBOGEN Sally Schor

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in an apartment in the Bronx.
The year is 1919. Act I. Scene 1. An afternoon in February. Scene 2. An
evening, three weeks later. Scene 3. Several days later. Act II. Scene 1.
An afternoon in April. Scene 2. Several weeks later. Scene 3. An evening,
mid-summer. Act III. A Saturday in September.

Director: Ezra Stone.

T

JLHE PLAY is an offspring of the radio serial called The
Goldbergs, of which Mrs. Berg is also the author. The
serial has been running on the air, I am told, for over six-
teen years and has more devotees than Hamtet has man-
aged to acquire in over three centuries. Though I have
never heard any part of it, my intuition tells me that it
must be pretty primitive stuff, not because any such whole-
sale popular devotion is necessarily always incompatible
with merit, but because all such radio soap operas can not
in their very nature be otherwise, unless one believes in
miracles, which have been inconveniently remiss for nine-
teen centuries.
The idea that one should presume to express any such

February 26, 1948 307

opinion about something one has never heard or seen is,
of course, execrable to many people, among them those
who have to see a glue factory before they will believe
that it is one and who regard the strong and unmistakable
empyreuma which they smell a mile away as unsubstantial
evidence. It is these same skeptics who impeached .me
when some time ago I observed that, while I had not gone
to the moving pictures since women started talking, I
nevertheless deemed them in the aggregate only fifth-rate,
maybe even only tenth-rate, theatre. Though, in truth, I
had seen several of the pictures, I did not wish to weaken
my argument by admitting the fact and contented myself
with the further observation that any moron could go to
the movies and learn that they were what I had said they
were, but that it required intelligence not to go to them
and know it. One does not have to go to the Flatbush gar-
bage dump every week to appreciate that it isn't Paris.
Nor, in the'same way, does one have to listen to such radio
programs as The Goldbergs to know that they are rubbish.

It all resolves itself, it need hardly be confided, into a
question of personal taste, and, while my own taste in
amusement may sometimes be of the low order that in-
cludes old-fashioned burlesque shows, slapstick comics, the
more vulgar circus clowns, and grand opera in English, it
does not embrace anything quite so unelevated as such
air bills. And the idea of making plays out of them and
thus punishing me in the professional arbitrary necessity
for seeing them is carrying things, if I may be so selfish as
to say so, too far.

The play made from one of them is in this case scarcely
a play at all, but rather a stage-televised radio show with-
out commercial interruptions. Its intention is to portray
a humble Jewish family that has moved from the lower
East Side to the Bronx and its difficulties in adjusting its
economics, to the more exclusive environment. Since it
deals sympathetically with Jewish people, its bad writing
and worse dramaturgy are as usual cautiously condoned
by the newpaper brethren in the allowance that, anyway
and above all, "its heart is in the right place/' as if a heart

308 Me and Molly

in the right place were one of the ultimate desiderata of
drama, a notion that engenders the disturbing thought
that plays without a heart in the right place are seriously
deficient and that such, for example, as a number of Ib-
sen's, Strindberg's and Shaw's, among a lot of others, are
not what we have long esteemed them to be.

As in various such Jewish folk plays, the spectacle is
compounded of all the stereotypes of the species: the
young daughter with musical ambitions who dreams of the
day when she will have a piano and whose dream brings
heartaches to her parents who can not afford one; the pa-
terfamilias who encounters the customary difficulties in
establishing himself in the dress business; the neighbor-
hood types who troop in and out and fill in the atmosphere
with dialect; and the stipulated elaborate matchmaking
on behalf of a young neighborhood girl and a shy suitor.
Also in evidence are the moving van men of sardonic
mien one of whom with a small trunk on his back stag-
gers in as if he were carrying a loaded freight car; the fre-
quent borrowing of food and household articles by the
neighbors; the kitchen jars in which the mother stores
her small savings; and the children, including the brash
young son who wants to be an inventor and who answers
his doubtful parents by comparing his youthful position
with that of Edison, all given to scooting in and out of the
premises on roller skates. To say nothing of the old uncle
who sits aside and vouchsafes homely philosophies; the
fat mother's comical trying on of a party dress; the radical
young Jew who ventilates his opinions, to the distress o
the orthodox family, on all occasions; the scene in which
the mother and father prepare for bed and provide amuse-
ment by appearing in old-fashioned nightgowns; the
mother's tender solicitude for the father when business
disappointment overtakes him; and the last minute good
news which, at the height of his dejection, promises that
he will soon be worth a million dollars.

The author's dialect dialogue is apparently derived less
from a close audition of such people as she depicts than
from a sedulous attendance on old-time vatideville

February 26, 1948 309

sketches. While my personal knowledge of such patois is
based wholly on the writings and plays of Montague Glass,
Arthur Kober and others whose ears have been endorsed
by people in a position to know, I entertain large doubts
if such stuff as "I'll go put an eye in the soup/' "your liver
is standing on the table/' and "take off your head" (for
"get your mind off the subject/') has any authenticity.

Mrs. Berg's play, in a word, is theatrical hokum which
the theatre exorcised years ago as outmoded and which
since has evidently found a prosperous haven on the radio.
It is, moreover, acted in terms of an old Aaron Hoffman
two-a-day sketch, except for the honest performance of a
child named Joan Lazer; it is directed by Ezra Stone in
terms of a color-blind traffic policeman; its scenery by
Harry Horner showing a three-room flat set into a frame
of skeletonized surrounding buildings looks as if it had
been assembled from storehouse odds and ends; its senti-
ment is turned on and off like a sugar tap on a maple tree;
and its two and one-half hours' attempt at humor does not
produce a single laugh comparable to any one of a dozen
in the fifteen-minute Jewish movie skit in Make Mine
Manhattan.

310

THE LINDEN TREE. MARCH *, 1948

A play by J. B. Priestley. Produced by Maurice Evans for
7 performances in the Music Box.

PROGRAM

EDITH WESTMORE Mary Kimber
DINAH LINDEN Marilyn Erskine
PROFESSOR LINDEN Boris Karloff
BERNARD FAWCETT

Emmett Rogers

MRS. COTTON Una O'Connor

ALFRED LOCKHART Noel Leslie
MRS. LINDEN Barbara Everest

REX LINDEN HaUiwell Hobbes, Jr.
JEAN LINDEN Viola Keats

MARION LINDEN Cathleen Cordell

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in Professor Linden's study in
the provincial city of Brumanley in northern England. Early spring, at
the present time. Act I. Friday. Scene 1. Late afternoon. Scene 2. Two
hours later. Act II. Saturday. Scene 1. Afternoon. Scene 2. Night, several
hours later.

Director: George Schaefer.

O,

NE OF THE most touching examples of the art of press-
agentry since Anna Held's milk, Jess Dandy's beer and
Earl Carroll's champagne baths was the attempt to stir up
some excitement over the fact that Boris Karloff, the
screen ghoul, acted in this play, which marked his tem-
porary departure from Hollywood, the role of a normal
human being. It might have worked in the movies, since
if in that medium an actor goes even so far as to shave off
his established little mustache for a role not only is he
hailed as an artist of such versatility as has not been heard
of in the world since Leonardo da Vinci, but they have to
add extra ushers in the film houses to handle the aghast
and admiring crowds. In the theatre, however, the circum-
stance that an actor can play two markedly different kinds
of roles is regarded not as a phenomenon but, if he can not
do it, rather as an indication that he ought to go back to
dramatic school and take lessons along with the other ama-
teurs.

In the theatre, in short, a Mansfield Celebrated for his

March 2 9 1948 311

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde jumps easily from a Prince Karl
to a Cyrano, and even a supposed one-role actor like John
Drew from dress suit elegants to Richard Carvel and
Shakespeare. William Faversham played everything from
Lord Algy to Stephen Phillips' Herod; Nat Goodwin,
though a hamfatter, was nevertheless equally at ease as
Marc Antony and the buckeroo in The Cowboy And The
Lady; and David Warfield was great stuff in both Weber
and Fields burlesque and Peter Grimm. Today, youngsters
like Marlon Brando play the poet Marchbanks one year
and the tough Kowalski the next, and like David Wayne
even a musical show leprechaun and a dramatic naval
ensign in the same season.

What impression Mr. Karloff made in the theatre was
based not on his ability to play a role which was the ex-
treme opposite of his screen roles, but on his ability to
play a role which, unlike his movie roles, called for some-
thing approaching acting. His performances in the films
have been confined largely to hideous makeups and the
appropriate accompanying faces. They have been to act-
ing what sulphuric acid is to counterfeiting; in other
words, the dripping of a caustic solution on a personality
plate. In his stage role, that of a university professor, he
found himself with his old hokum makeup off and his
pants down. No longer could he be an actor in dressing-
room name only; he had to act. That he came off pretty
well was no credit to versatility, since what he has been
showing on the screen has not been any versatility of his
own but Perc Westmore's, and what he has been doing
has not been acting but merely Hallowe'en child's-play.
It was a credit rather to his realization that acting must
go a little deeper than painting one's face to look like
curdled pea soup and fastening on six-inch finger claws,
and that it must have some concern with character beyond
popping out eyeballs and growling like a bad-natured
dachshund.

Mr^ Karloflf's vehicle, a prompt failure, was roughly to
be Described as Donald Ogden Stewart's unlamented How
of its metaphysical nonsense and given some

312 The Linden Tree

slight clarity by a more adult playwright. The story, with
family overtones, again was of a professor whose ideas get
him into trouble with the college officials, who is removed
from the faculty, who refuses to give up his theories and
gracefully retire, and who determinedly sticks to his guns
in the belief that he can help in solving some of the prob-
lems that presently beset mankind. And the aforesaid
theories once again dealt with the chaos of modern exist-
ence, the responsibilities of the individual, the atom bomb,
etc. And once again, too, it all proved that Priestley can
overtalk a play into a dramatic coma in no time and that
it would benefit him greatly to reserve some of the talk to
persuade himself that, if he were to take a little more care
with his plays, they might get somewhere. His habit of
turning out three or four a year not only botches his un-
questioned gifts but so confuses his head that they some-
times seem ridiculous. In this play, for one example, he
asks us to accept sympathetically as an important mind a
history professor who stoutly believes in his competence to
analyze England's and the world's current ills and who yet
eventually finds that he has made an awful boner in the
very beginning (the second sentence, in fact) of his treat-
ise on the subject. And most of the rest of the ideas, such,
in further example, as that old age and tender youth are
alone able to decide what is right and what is wrong seem
to be more aptly suited to a Tin Pan Alley song writer
than to a dramatist who invites us to take him seriously.
The damaging haste in which the play was written be-
trays itself as well in other of its confusions. The only pre-
sented specimens of the kind of people the professor might
influence are two young students. One of these is a girl
more concerned with the shade of lipstick suitable to her
and with making an impression on the professor's rich son
than with any history he tries to teach her. The other is
a loud, brash oaf who not only pays little or no attention
to what the professor tries to explain to him, but who is
not averse to imposing his own incontinent opinions on
him. The sole believer in the professor's doctrines is
shown by the playwright to be his yotmgest daughter, yet

March 2, 1948 313

when he attempts at the final curtain to elucidate them to
her, she becomes so bored that she falls asleep while he is
talking. The philosophy that only the very young and very
old are able to do anything to rectify the world's impulse
to wars becomes a little perplexing in light of the fact that
it is the young whose spirit of adventure notoriously pro-
pels them proudly into wars and the old who have long
maneuvered them into them. The collateral notion that
only the young and old are blessed with spirituality and
that the middle-aged are ever utterly devoid of it is too
foolish to be considered. Additional similarly choice arti-
cles in Mr. Priestley's credo are his belief that an under-
standing of history would assist the peace of the world, an
argument which seems to overlook the ample historical
education of many of those who have provoked wars; his
conviction that there is something subversive of social
morality in living well and having a pleasant time once in
a while; and his idea that a man who works without
thought of monetary reward is always ipso facto a more
worthy one than one who operates more practically.

It is evidently Mr. Priestley's further idea that all that
is necessary to convert two and a half hours of such
speeches into a play is to drop into them every now and
then a "my dear Jean/ 1 a "are you listening, my darling?,"
or a "as I was saying to Professor Lockhart," and mean-
while to stuff a pipe. What it comes to, one fears, is rather
a poor novel attemptedly made theatrical by periodically
inserting a curtain into it instead of a book-mark. And
what it sounds like is not a play but a non-stop phono-
graph, out of tune.

The acting, except for Karloff, Barbara Everest as his
wife, and Viola Keats as his love-forsaken daughter with
scientific inclinations, was without any flair, though Em-
mett Rogers as the young student contrived to picture a
man with a chronic cold in the nose with an unusual
realism. The direction followed the regulation pattern of
insinuating some movement into a static play by having
the characters stand and walk around the room when nor-
mally they would have remained quietly seated and in

314 The Linden Tree

causing the actors so intensely to listen to one another's
speeches under the common stage delusion that such
listening catches an illusion of reality that they all gave
the impression of being victims of deafness. It also per-
mitted Una O'Connor to play the comedy-relief house-
hold servant role with such vaudeville excess that one was
disappointed when she made her entrances unaccompa-
nied by a straight man or a trick dog. Peter Wolf's setting
of the professor's study looked so cosy, comfortable and al-
together desirable that it was hard to sympathize with his
family's constant allusions to it as intolerable. And the
stage lighting, by whoever was responsible, was, as is often
the case, focused with such severity upon the players that
the ladies in the company, young as well as old, all seemed
to have accordion-pleated necks and eyes like Bluepoint
oysters.

315

THE HALLAMS. MARCH 4, 1948

A play by Rose Franken. Produced by William Brown
Meloney for 12 performances in the Booth Theatre.

PROGRAM

MRS. HALLAM Ethel Griffies

ETTA HAIXAM Mildred Dunnock

PAUL HALLAM Royal Beat

GRACE HAT. LAM June Walker

HELEN HALLAM Mildred Wall

WALTER HALLAM Matt Briggs
HARRY HALLAM Frank M. Thomas
MR. HALLAM John McKee

JERRY HALLAM Dean Norton

KENDRICK HALLAM Katharine Bard

VICTOR HALLAM Alan Baxter

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene: Dining-room of the Hattam residence in
the east seventies. Manhattan. Time: An evening in spring. Act II. Scene:
Jerry and Kendrick's apartment. Time: Two weeks later. Act IH. Scene:
The same as Act J. Time: The following afternoon.

Director: Rose Franken.

T

AHI

*HERE ARE NOT many American writers for the stage who
have a better appreciation of character and motive than
Miss Franken. In even her poorer plays she here and there
indicates a perception in those directions which, however
insolvent they otherwise are, lends them at least a degree
of conviction. It is, with minor exception, her fault that
she imbeds the attributes in materials unworthy of them.
Character and motive, in other words, commendable as
they are, are frequently made to suffer by setting them in
an inferior dramatic structure, like precious stones set in
brass.

That character is infinitely more important than plot
obviously need not be re-stated. But it is not merely plot
that is referred to, though most of hers are either rehashes
of old, familiar ones or give the effect of having been
festooned around the characters like pink paper streamers,
mostly faded. What one has in mind is rather the fact that
these plots do not appear to be an outgrowth of her charac-
ters but seem to be arbitrarily conjured up after-thoughts
forced upon them, much after the manner of sashes san-

316 The Hallams

guinely added to dresses that look too plain. It is for this
reason that this present family play, the seventy-fourth
of one sort or another in the last six seasons, while wel-
comely avoiding the excursions into cosmic philosophies
dear to the fancy of the Priestleys and while endorsable in
some of its character appraisal and observation of detail,
misses in satisfaction. There are, as well, other reasons.
Though, as noted, the author deals honestly with most of
her people, they are, alas, essentially dull people and she
has not the genius, as had Chekhov and Hauptmann, to
make dulness dramatically and theatrically alive and in-
teresting. The characters, with two exceptions, are inter-
esting individually as faithfully recorded examples of
their dull species, but their dulness in combination not
only dampens the general picture but contrives to detract
dramatically from the studies of them singly. As clinical
specimens, in short, they are one by one creditable, but
in congress assembled they give the clinic a morguish
color.

There is still another slightly distracting element in the
play. As in her Another Language, of which the present
exhibit is what she describes as a progression in the lives
of the same Hallam family, and as in one or two of her
subsequently written plays, the characters, though pre-
sented as Gentiles, essentially have many of the unmis-
takable attributes and qualities of Jews. Another Lan-
guage, in fact, was, we are informed, originally written as
a Jewish play whose Jewish characters were given Chris-
tian names, with no other changes in them, when Miss
Franken was persuaded by her producer, Arthur Beck-
hard, that it would thereby probably attract a much wider
audience. Miss Franken seems since at times to have writ-
ten Jewish characters under the delusion that they are not
Jewish, with the result in this latest play that, when her
Gentile matriarch objects to a granddaughter's marriage
to a Jew, the audience's feeling is that it would have been
much mdre realistic if she objected to him because he was
a Baptist. That she is able to make one critically accept
and believe in her characters in spite of such intrusive

March 4 3 1948 317

qualifications is a tribute to her considerable gift. In only
two instances, as observed, does her skill here desert her.
Her girl who marries the Hallam grandson is a lay figure
out of the kind of thing, known in the vernacular as soap
opera, which women who have nothing more cultural
than dish-washing to occupy them in the daytime listen
to on the radio. Her tubercular grandson is no less a figure
derived from the same source. And the dialogue which
she has supplied the twain stems directly from a like font.

The story concerns the opposition of an autocratic ma-
triarch to the young wife whom the consumptive has intro-
duced into the family's midst, with her efforts to separate
the couple, with the wife's determination to remain by
her husband's side during his illness, with his death, and
with the ultimate mellowing of the matriarch toward her
and the hint that she will find release from her grief in
the connubial arms of the youngest of the matriarch's sons.

The author's stage direction of her play is first-rate; she
contrives to give it a sense of natural life even when it is
remiss in it. And some of the performances, notably those
of Ethel Griffies as the matriarch and Mildred Wall as an
outspoken in-law, are very good. The particular weakness
is in those of Dean Norton and Katharine Bard as the
young married couple, though their roles are partly re-
sponsible. But responsible or not, both are out of acting
key with the general acting composition of the play. Nor-
ton portrays the tuberculosis victim much as if the disease
he is suffering from were heliencephalitis, or inflammation
of the brain from exposure to the sun, complicated by an
especially aggravated case of arrested development. And
Miss Bard, an attractive young person, permits a studied
elocutionary delivery to rob the wife character of any pos-
sible small vestige of truth.

Many years ago, David Belasco propounded the idea
that to the established three dramatic unities there should
be added theatrically what he described as the unity of
blood. In other words, that in a play like this the direct
members of a family should be cast with actors whose
looks at least in some measure suggest that they are related

318 The HaOams

by blood-ties and not, as is so often the case, with actors
whose appearances belie any conceivable remotest rela-
tionship. The casting of the several sons of the matriarch
and her husband in this instance hinted at a big scandal
in the old lady's early life, since the looks and every other
thing about them precluded any reasonable supposition
of their legitimacy.

319

A TEMPORARY ISLAND. MARCH 14, 1948

A play by Halstead Welles, with songs by Lorenzo Fuller
and calliope music by Lehman EngeL Produced by the
Experimental Theatre, Inc., for 6 performances in the
Maxine Elliott Theatre.

PROGRAM

CORDELIA
HELOISE
BUNNY
Miss EVANS
Miss RECTOR
MR. FISK

MlSSWAMPSEY

MR. TOTXNINGHAM
MR. CHANTER
MR. AVERT
JUNIUS

NED

MR. PRINCE

SUZETTE

FELICITY

Nancy Franklin

Karen Lindgren

Rita Gam

lane Hoffman

Hilda Vaughn

Philip Bourneuf

Phttippa Bevans

Blair Davies

Harrison Dowd

Gregory Robins

B&DiUard

BUI Myers

Leon Askin

VeraZorina

Ruth Vaughn

MR. BOUTOURUNSKY

Walter Palance

MRS. BOUTOURLINSKY Ann Sullivan
MR. SMITH Taylor Graces

UNCLE BENNY Ernest Truex

SOPHOMORE Shirley Ames

SENIOR Anne-Marie Gayer

FRESHMAN Elaine Bradford

FARMER Car I Judd

FARMER'S WIFE Natalie Benisch
FARMER'S DAUGHTER

Winnie Mae Martin
CHIEF OF POLICE Gene Gahin

POLICEMAN Geoffrey Lumb

MILLHAND Dion Allen

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place in a New England town be-
tween 11 a.m.., May 29, and the dawn of May 30, 1881. Act I. Scene 1.
t The office of the President of the Massachusetts Female Seminary. Scene
2. A willow grove across the canal. Act II. Scene 1. The willow grove.
Scene 2. Circus tent main entrance.

Director: Halstead Welles.

I ox EVERY ADULT in a state of arrested boyhood has
wanted to run off and join a circus. There are some who
do not. They prefer to stay at home and enjoy the experi-
ence vicariously in writing plays about doing it. Mr. Welles
is one such. A college teacher by profession, he visualizes
himself in that capacity as a stage character who is invested
with the moral responsibility of chasing an itinerant circus
out of the campus environment. In the line of his imposed
duty* he falls in love with one Mile. Suzette, a beautiful

320 A Temporary Island

equestrienne, and is overwhelmed by a desire to join up
and follow his beloved. In the end, however, Mr. Welles,
even more greatly overwhelmed by the morality imposed
upon him by his calling, causes his hero-self to doubt the
propriety and wisdom of any such happy course and sends
his replica safely back to the classroom.

In Polly Of The Circus, produced more than three dec-
ades ago, it was a gentleman of the cloth who was made to
follow much the same procedure with a fair equestrienne,
though in that case he was not such a poltroon and re-
mained with his inamorata. And before then and since,
we have been presented both here and abroad with various
paraphrases of the theme.

Mr. Welles' play, like most of the others, is hardly a
pippin, in fact, infinitely less of one than any of the species
we have hitherto engaged. It gives the impression that the
very idea of doing any such thing as considering even for
a moment an attachment for a circus lady is offensive to
his sense of respectability. One furthermore gains the im-
pression that he is a little ashamed of having thought of
such a shocking idea and is determined cautiously to edge
around it by relating it in language, and tons of it, that
will evade the direct issue. It is his device, accordingly, to
distract attention from his theme with a plenitude of sub-
sidiary characters and episodes and with such high-sound-
ing and aimless talk as suggests that it was assembled
from the careless thumbing of a thesaurus. The final effect
is of his having dropped what he daringly treasured as a
diamond of an idea into a jar of hydro-fluoric acid and its
complete disintegration and disappearance.

The author's direction of his play only confounded it
the more, and the performances were mostly in the nonde-
script, routine mold.

I should like to add a word on the stage lighting, which
will fit that of numerous other productions as well. Little,
if seems to me, has been more damaging to these produc-
tions than the kind of theoretically improved illumination
which for years now has been poorly adapted from Euro-
pean sources. While its intent is admirable, its accomplish-

March 14, 1948 321

ment is often disastrous. Not only does it so trickily light
plays that one's attention is frequently focused on its elab-
orate mechanical performances to the plays' loss, but it so
overdoes the lighting of the actors and actresses that they
seem much less to be the characters they are supposed to
be than suspects in a police lineup in a jail run by Dizzy
Gillespie. In the case of the ladies, the situation, as I
have noted in an earlier chapter, is especially embarrassing,
I frequently wonder, indeed, if Lillian Russell would have
achieved her great reputation as a beauty had she been
lighted by Moe Hack, or if Irene Bentley, Lotta Faust and
all those lovely girls would still sing in our memories had
they been lighted by other of our current geniuses. When-
ever I go to a theatre these days and, before the curtain
rises, observe enough balcony and proscenium projectors
to illuminate a half dozen Mardi Gras carnivals and, after
it rises, some thirty thousand dollars' worth of stage equip-
ment to amplify them, I not only feel sorry for the poor
actresses who are about to suffer their combined challenge
of nose, chin, and neck shadows, but think back, not with-
out a sigh, to the days when simple footlights, a couple of
gelatine slides in the wings, and a single gallery spotlight
made better plays perfectly acceptable and the actresses
in them look like human beings and not, as nowadays, like
dried apricots smeared with whitewash.

322

YOU NEVER CAN TELL. MARCH 16, 1948

A revival of the comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Pro-
duced by the Theatre Guild in association with Alfred
Fischer for 5 weeks' performances in the Martin Beck
Theatre.

PROGRAM

DOLLY Patricia Kirkland

VALENTINE TomHelmore

MAH> Scott Douglas

PFTTT.TP Nigel Stock

MRS. CLANDON Frieda Inescort

GLORIA Faith Brook

CRAMPTON Ralph Forbes

McCoMAs Walter Hudd

WAITER Leo G. Carroll

BOHUN William Devlin

SYNOPSIS: The action takes place at a seaside resort in Devon,
England, in August, 1896. Act I. Valentines room. Morning. Act II. The
terrace of the Marine Hotel. Noon. Act III. A sitting-room in the hotel.
Afternoon. Act IV. Same as Act III. Evening.

Director: Peter Ashmore.

I

HAVE ALWAYS cast my plays/* once saucily wrote Shaw,
"in the ordinary practical comedy form in use at all thea-
tres; and far from taking an unsympathetic view of the pop-
ular preference for fun, fashionable dresses, a little music,
and even an exhibition of eating and drinking by people
with an expensive air, attended by an if-possible-comic
waiter, I was more than willing to show that the drama can
humanize these things as easily as they, in undramatic
hands, can dehumanize the drama/' You Never Can Tell
jinksfully follows that pattern and after fifty-one years still
retains a deal of its original amusement. Not only did Shaw
thus snatch any contemplated f acetiousness out of its critics'
mouths, but he added injury to insult by insisting that he
had written the comedy practically to order. In his own
frank manner he allowed that it was an attempt to comply
with the many requests for a play in which the much para-
graphed brilliancy of Arms And The Man should be
tempered by some consideration for the requirements of
managers in search of fashionable comedies for West End

March 16, 1948 323

theatres. The critics, of course, as was their habit, declined
to take his word for it and again put down both statements
as examples of his customary prankishness. But he was
nevertheless telling the perfect truth and simply garbing
it in humor, which always has the effect on dimwits of
making it dubious and unacceptable .for what it really is.

Some of the once pert wrinkles in the farce-comedy are
now, as might be expected, not quite so salty and some of
the devices have since been repeated in the theatre to their
later day debility. But once more the old rascal's lively wit,
character observation and literary velvet come to the rescue
and make even some of the drier aspects of the play bubble.
He proves, as always he has, that an ability to handle the
English language, despite the apparent superstition of a
large number of our American playwrights, is quite as im-
portant an asset as the ability to handle the stage, and that
it also is not such an odious notion, when you are writing
a comedy, to have a few ideas lying around. That some of
these ideas, to repeat, have rusted is not news, except to
those who are so "surprised at any ideas at all in a play that
they consider their simple presence not only a token of
ultra-modernity but even insurrectionary. But, if some of
the conceits have faded, the play on the whole has not,
since Shaw's character sense and sense of intelligent comedy
and even farce retain their gay attraction. And, above all,
there is the magnetism of his superior nonchalance. As
usual, he masters the trick of making his audiences think
that the play was just tossed off casually; that he considers
it more or less a trifle; that if it is entertaining he could
handily, if he wished to trouble himself, make it three
times as entertaining; and that what ideas he peddles in it
are only minor samples of his wholesale stock.

That is one of the most captivating of his many capti-
vating subterfuges. The plays of nine-tenths of our play-
wrights have the air of being their entire immediate capi-
taL They suggest that they have given their all to them,
and that there remains nothing more for them to say on
the subjects. But, save possibly for Saint Joan, there has not
been a play of Shaw's which hasn't insinuated that, were

324 Yot/ Never Can Tell

he to choose to do so, he might unload into it resources
which he has not even faintly touched. In this lies perhaps
the reason for at least a small measure of his intellectual
celebrity. He is a past-master of the stratagem of intellec-
tuality by suggestion. By throwing out merely intimations
of profundity, shrewdly couched in what seems an off-hand
wit and humor, he not only persuades his auditors that he
regards them as simply the foam on his cerebral beer, but
tantalizes them like so many fish jumping at quickly with-
drawn bait. This is plainly not to say that he hasn't a mind
superior to every other dramatist of his time. It is rather to
say that he fully appreciates the theatrical value of mer-
chanting it only piecemeal and substituting implication
for what in the very nature of a theatrical audience would
be tiring complete statement.

It is thus that what is usually called Shaw's audacity is
not audacity at all, but caution. If he were really auda-
cious, he would let himself go and talk his audience bril-
liantly to death. But he knows that that way lies theatri-
cal failure, and, as he himself has always w openly admitted,
he likes the money too much to do any such foolish thing.
So he foxily restrains himself and, like an artful candy
butcher, rattles his wares at the audience and deceives it
with a magnificent spiel into believing that there are genu-
ine diamond brooches in every twenty-five cent package.

There has not in his day and age been a dramatist-show-
man to match him, and there is not an expedient he does
not know. Over and over again he succeeds in selling the
same Crackerjack simply by wrapping it up in different
colored paper and prefacing it elaborately with the old,
brilliant come-on. Over and over again he bamboozles his
customers through the device of making verbal surprise
pass for dramatic surprise, through the trick of impressing
his off-stage personality upon his on-stage activities, and
through the hocus-pocus of allowing the yokels to pick the
shell hiding the pea the while he cheerfully picks their
pockets.

He is ^wonderful, is this grand old, great old boy. Age
may wilher him, but custom can not stale him, much. If

March 16, 1948 325

some of his plays date on the score of their philosophies,
the spirit he has injected into them remains alive and
kicking. It is that spirit, that persistently chuckling, laugh-
ing, youthful spirit, which, like the phosphorescence on
the dial of even a sometimes run-down clock, outlasts the
dawn.

Shaw once observed in connection with his difficulty in
understanding certain foreign plays, that, while he knew it
was lamentable, it was useless for him to attempt to conceal
his hopeless deficiencies as a linguist. "I am very sorry/ 7 he
said, "but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only
to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanscrit
in less time than it takes me to buy a German dictionary.
The worst of it is that this disability of mine seems to be
most humiliatingly exceptional. My colleagues sit at
French plays, German plays, and Italian plays, laughing
at all the jokes, thrilling with all the fine sentiments, and
obviously understanding the finest shades of the language;
whilst I, unless I have read the play beforehand or asked
somebody during the interval what it is about, must either
struggle with a sixpenny 'synopsis* which invariably misses
the real point of the drama, or else sit with a guilty con-
science and a blank countenance, drawing the most ex-
travagantly wrong inferences from the dumb show of the
piece."

While I am not up on Sanscrit, I happen to know
French and German and some Italian and so, unlike Shaw,
do not suffer too much trouble with plays in those lan-
guages, apart from the ability inconveniently to under-
stand quite a number of them. My difficulty, unlike Shaw,
lies in understanding plays in English, even if there con-
ceivably is something to understand in them, when they
are played by supposedly English-speaking actors from
England. The manner of speech employed by many of
them is not only Sanscrit but Greek and even Choctaw to
my ears; I know in a vague way that it is English, even if
the sounds are not familiar to me; but I can not for the
life of me, strain as I will, make out what they represent
and what the actors are talking about. And if the play is

326 You Never Can Tell

couched in the Cockney dialect, it might as well, so far as
I am concerned, be in pig-Latin.

I am told that all this indicates simply that I am an
American with the usual overtones of vulgarity and hence
incapable of appreciating and assimilating the British lin-
guistic elegances. Perhaps. But I nevertheless think it
would be a little considerate of these English actors when
they come over to my vulgar country to learn, on behalf
of the many vulgar Americans like me who have to foot
the bill, to vulgarize their speech at least to the small
point where we could make head or tail of it.

It is the chief merit of the present production of the
Shaw comedy that it has been cast not only with some Eng-
lish actors who exceptionally speak the tongue with a suf-
ficient respect for American ears but in greater part with
English actors who have been working over here for
years and who have thus achieved a welcome clarity of
diction. The stage direction, however, is often so atrocious,
what with its conversion of the juveniles into leap-frog
players and its self-consciousness in the verbal delivery of
the Shavian whimsicalities, that much of the humor to its
distress is rammed into the audience with a sledge-ham-
mer. Tom Helmore, in the Valentine role, is furthermore
allowed so many acrobatics, accompanied by a fixed music
show grin, that all he seems to lack is a pair of hard shoes
to amplify his performance with an occasional tap dance.
The rest, especially Leo G. Carroll as the waiter, Walter
Hudd as the solicitor McComas, and William Devlin as
the waiter's barrister son, are good enough, though Frieda
Inescort's sharply clipped reading of Mrs. Clandon has
little more shading than a cactus bush and though the
two young people, Nigel Stock and Patricia Kirkland, the
latter the only American in the cast, are, as has been noted,
privileged such an excess of animal spirits that they seem
to be the progeny of the Cramptons much less than the
offspring of Agnes de Mille and the late Ned Wayburn.

327

JOY TO THE WORLD. MARCH 18, 1948

A play by Allan Scott. Produced by John Houseman and
William R. Katzell for the rest of the season's perform-
ances in the Plymouth Theatre.

PROGRAM

MARY MAGILLE Mary Welch

FLOYD Michael Dreyfuss

MILDRED Lois Halt

EDITH WHAM Peggy Haley

J. NEWTON McKEON

Myron McCormick
MORTIMER BEHRMAN Leslie Litomy
RICHARD STANTON Hugh Rennie
EDWARD F. GANNON Bert Freed
ALEXANDER SOREN Alfred Drake
TILWORTHY Harris Brown

ANN WOOD Marsha Hunt

STEVE WALTON Herb Ratner

JOHN V. HOPPER Clay Clement

SYNOPSIS: The entire action of the play takes place in the of-
fices of Alexander Soren, Vice-President in charge of production of Atlas-
Continental Pictures. Time: The present. Act I. Late afternoon. Act II.
Scene 1. A few days later. Late at night. Scene 2. One week later. Mid-
day. Act III. Two days later. Late afternoon.

Director: Jules Dassin.

DMITRI OUMANSKY Kurt Kasznar
BARBARA BENTON Lucule Patton
HENRY SAZNTSBURY

Walter F.Appier

SAMPSON Hal Gerson

MR.WILCOS: Theodore Newton
HARRY Sam BonneU

SAM BLUMENFELD

Morris Carnovsky
Beverly Thawl
Blanche Zohar
Jeanne J or den
Vicfa Carlson

MESSENGERS

M,

LR. .SCOTT'S PLAY is the regulation Hollywood table
d'h6te into which he has incorporated, as a fillip, a tirade
against motion picture censorship and an impassioned
plea for art on the screen. The fillip is scarcely sufficient
to salt the dry materials and has the further slight handi-
cap, as he presents it, of being asinine, since his crusading
hero is a film producer whose major contributions to the
estate of the cinema are announced to have been a movie
called Clara the most classical feature of which was a scene
between a man and a woman about to indulge, in sexual
intercourse while wrapped up in a fish net and a subse-

328 Joy To The World

quent epic called Katie whose most colossal scene was a
literal duplication of it. The author's large indignation
over the threat of official suppression of such balderdash
and his zeal for the aesthetic progress of the screen are
consequently not without some symptoms of mirth.

The characters figuring in the twaddle are the following:

The aforesaid producer who indicates his genius by
maintaining throughout the play a look of frozen con-
tempt, by abruptly dismissing from his presence at regular
intervals anyone around the moving picture studio who
politely seeks counsel of him, and by constantly seizing
up one or another of the numerous telephones on his desk
and loudly telling the caller to go to hell.

His dry, disillusioned press-agent, given to the bottle,
who periodically interrupts the proceedings with a wise-
crack.

The comely young woman in charge of the studio's re-
search department, who is a Phi Beta Kappa from a mid-
Western college and hence full of ideals about the movies
and who urges the hero at great length to fight compro-
mise and to go on to higher things, which naturally causes
him to succumb to her physical allure and in the end to
propose marriage to her.

The chairman of the board who will not listen to any
art talk, who is such a bounder that he thinks his moving
picture company should make a little money, and who,
when he is taken to task for his low views by the studio
aesthetes, demands their immediate resignations, heatedly
thrusting his pocket pen at them to accelerate matters.

The timid head of the story department, with horn-
rimmed glasses.

The studio manager who blusters in and out of the
producer-genius' office, which looks like a drawing-room
designed by General Motors, who comments irascibly on
economic waste in the studio, and who regularly gets
kicked out by the producer-genius.

The loyal female secretary, ready to stick to the hero
through thick and thin.

The comic office-boy, his mouth constantly agape.

March 18, 1948 329

The aged producer, once in the cloak and suit trade,
who began in the movie business in its nickelodeon days,
who has amassed a fortune in it, who sympathizes with
the young director-genius' dreams as delayed dreams of
his own, and who hands over to him his elaborate outfit,
plus fourteen million dollars and a sentimental speech
of what seems a like amount of words.

The haughty movie star, the very peak of haut ton.

The man who has been sitting in the outer office for
weeks vainly waiting to get an audience with the great di-
rector.

The voluptuous blonde upon whom the male members
of the cast clap lascivious eyes and to whom with a wink
at one another they offer a screen test.

The lines provided the characters include the usual al-
lusions to such Hollywood illuminati as Darryl Zanuck,
et al.; the stage business includes the usual slaps on
women's posteriors; and the direction in large part fol-
lows the movie chase sequence pattern. The gentleman
responsible for the latter, one Dassin, a screen director by
profession, observed to the press before the play opened,
"I don't want to give the impression that Joy To The
World is a propaganda play. It isn't. It's simply about a
man and his job, and his job is making movies. He loves
to make movies and he's good at it and when we first meet
him he thinks that's all, that's enough. But by the time his
experience is over in the play, he realizes that just making
movies won't do, unless they reflect the good and hopeful-
ness in you."

It was apparent that Mr. Dassin either had not read the
script or, if he had, did not digest exactly what it was
about. Not only is the play clearly a propaganda play, but
it is, as has been noted, a propaganda play, aside from
its gladiatorial jabs at censorship, for high screen art as
opposed to the present Hollywood commercial product.
And not only, to confound matters, does its protagonist's
eventual imposing resolve take the form of a picture on
Samuel Gompers which even at best could not in view of
his previous competences be anything more artistically

330 Joy To The World

exalted than some of the biographical films that the in-
dustry has already turned out, and not only in its nature
could it not be hoped to equal such already produced and
profitable art pictures as Henry V or, for that matter, even
such art turkeys as Mourning Becomes Electra, but, in im-
mediate point, it is pretty hard to reconcile an arbitrary
emphasis on "good" and "hopefulness" with authentic art
in any direction, whether in literature, painting, music, or
even the films. There have, Mr. Dassin should be told, been
neither of those boluses in what are locally venerated as
some of the outstanding artistic pictures made in France
and Italy, or in Germany before the war.

I am told that the idea still stubbornly flourishes in
Hollywood that the New York critics are so prejudiced
against screen players, "despite the stage success now. and
again of one or another of them," that the latter are tak-
ing their lives in their hands if they venture into the
theatre. The theory should take its place in the category
of other rococo ideas like technocracy, semantics, existen-
tialism, salvarsan, and the efficiency of dog mange cures in
promoting such a growth of hair on the human head as
will abash the bowels of a Victorian sofa. Far from being
hostile to the movie actors, the critics, it begins to look,
are so favorably disposed toward them that even those
who can not act at all sometimes get notices so sugary that
newspaper readers economize by putting them in their
breakfast coffee. The film actor who fails to get praise con-
sequently has become such a phenomenon that people
rush around to see him out of sheer curiosity, with the re-
sult that the play he is in occasionally enjoys something
of a run. It is the stage player, indeed, who seems rather
to suffer the critics* prejudice. Expecting much more of
him, the critics make demands of him that they evidently
are only too willing to remit in the case of the Hollywood
immigrant. Screen actors have been charitably let down
on performances that stage actors would have been vigor-
ously denounced for, and things have come to the point
where at least eight of our better young players who have

March 18, 1948 ' 331

not been sufficiently approved by the local reviewers have
sagaciously betaken themselves to Hollywood so that on
their ultimate return they may benefit by the reviewers'
newly acquired enthusiasm for them.

The records of the present season indicate clearly that
the love feast for film players which got under steam last
year with Ingrid Bergman, Paul Muni and James Stewart
is still going full tilt. Paul Kelly, June Lockhart, Jessica
Tandy, Henry Fonda, John Garfield and Ethel Griffies,
among others, have got such notices as were not surpassed
by those of Edwin Booth and Ada Rehan in their heyday.
Screen youngsters like Kim Hunter, Joan Tetzel and Ro-
berta Jonay have made many of the reviewers turn hand-
springs that they never have on behalf of more competent
kids who have always done their bathing indoors. Anthony
Quinn came off almost as handsomely as ever did Jame-
son Lee Finney in his prime, and Boris Karloff, though
his vehicle, too, was appropriately taken for a ride, got
notices in general quite the equal of those once provided
E. S. Willard and Sol Smith Russell. Charles Laughton
was eulogized here and there for a performance so hammy
that Walter Hampden would have been hung for it. And
even John Loder and Neil Hamilton got by with the
kind of acting that would have made show boat critics
wince.

The most recent example of the attitude of the critics
was to be had in the instance of Marsha Hunt, who came
on from Hollywood to make her stage bow in this Joy To
The World. Miss Hunt is a lovely and charming girl with
a heap of what our fathers used confidentially to describe
as sex appeal; her personality and manner are completely
winning; and, since such attributes are certainly not to
be sneered at even by her severest critics, I should, as one
such, be only too delighted to take her out to supper any
time she gives the word* But to praise this fair and de-
lightful creature for any real dramatic acting ability, as
quite a number of the colleagues have done, is, I think,
going a little too far in their equally personal admiration

332 Joy To The World

for her, even if she is of a pleased mind to have supper
with them instead of with me, foolishly. When it comes
to the matter of acting (which, of course, I would cleverly
refrain from mentioning over the hot bird and cold bot-
tle) , Miss Hunt, I fear, still has something to learn.

She should be instructed, for example, that the con-
stant pretty profile acting dear to the screen is not only
dispensable on the stage but, if indulged in, ruinous by
reason of its obvious self-consciousness. She should also
have been told that, while it is all very well never to look
directly into the camera, a desperately painstaking aver-
sion of the eyes from the stage's fourth wall takes on a
strained and studied air that can be disquieting. She
should furthermore be coached out of the restricted physi-
cal movement appropriate to screen photography and into
a fluidity more relevant to the stage. And she should, too,
guard her enunciation and not pronounce "specific" as
"suspific" and "obsolete" as "obsolit," or what sounds very
much like it. She is, in short, a darling, but she needs some
lessons in a craft which its Hollywood counterpart only
remotely resembles.

There is in addition, I hear, a belief among Hollywood
writers that they are taking a dangerous chance in the
theatre with plays dealing with Hollywood, and that the
local critics, being not interested in Hollywood, are even
more hostile to them than they are to Hollywood players.
The writers seem, at least superficially, to have something
in their favor there, since, including Joy To The World,
there have been ten failures out of ten such plays in the
last ten years. They may, however, be reassured that the
plays have failed not primarily because they were about
Hollywood, but because they were very bad plays and
would have failed just as quickly if they had been about
London, Paris, or Passaic, New Jersey. And they may, in-
cidentally, be further reassured by the fact that in the
same ten year period fifteen plays dealing in one way or
another with religion and the Bible have also failed,
which doesn't necessarily prove that the critics are disin-
terested in and hostile to God.

March 18, 1948 333

Let one of the Hollywood writers write a Hollywood
play as good as Once In A Lifetime and he will have
nothing to worry about, particularly, as it seems, if he is
wary enough to cast it with a lot of screen players, prefer-
ably not too gifted in acting.

334

MACBETH. MARCH 31, 1948

A revival of the Shakespeare tragedy, with incidental music
by Alan Bush. Produced by Theatre, Inc., in association
with Brian Doherty for 29 performances in the National
Theatre.

PROGRAM

Stephen Courtleigh
EttioUReid
Michael Reitty
Michael Redgrave
Geoffrey Toone
Whitfield Connor
John Cromwell
Hector MacGregor
John Straub
Paul Mann
Thomas Palmer
Ken Raymond
John McQuade
Arthur Keegan
Flora Robson

DUNCAN

MALCOLM

DONALBAIN

MACBETH

BANQUO

MACDUFF

LENNOX

Ross

ANGUS

MENTETTH

CAITHNESS

FLEANCE

SIWARD

YOUNG SIWABD

LADY MACBETH

LADY MACDUFF Beatrice Straight

SON TO MACDUFF Jttdson Rees

A WOUNDED SERGEANT

John McQuade
A MESSENGER AT IVERNESS

Robinson Stone
THE PORTER AT IVERNESS

RusseU Collins

AN OLD MAN Blair Cutting

SEYTON Harry Hess

A MURDERER Paul Mann

His YOUNGER ACCOMPLICE

WhitVernon

A LORD Lamont Johnson

A MURDERER AT FIFE

Martin Balsam

A DOCTOR Russell Collins

A GENTLEWOMAN Penelope Potter
Two WATCHMEN J Michael Reilly
ATDuNSiNANE 1 JohnStraub
A SINGER Arthur Keegan

A PAGE Sonny Curven

(Robinson Stone
Martin Balsam
Harry Hess
(Gillian Webb

THE WEIRD SISTERS J Julie Harris
I Ann Hegira

AN ARMED HEAD Whitfield Connor
A BLEEDING CHILD Ken Raymond
A CHILD CROWNED Marcia Marcus

SYNOPSIS; Scene. Scotland and, in one scene, England.
Director: N orris Houghton.

LHE MACBETH ROLE has been played by various actors
in often markedly various ways; I have in my day wit-
nessed performances that were so wholly at odds with one
another that they were sometimes befuddling; but, though
they occasionally appeared to be absurdly exaggerated, I
have never seen one that could not, if one cleverly argued

March 31, 1948 335

the case with oneself, be more or less justified critically.
This does not mean that the actual performances were
not at times poor, since it is not acting I refer to; it is the
matter, rather, of conceptions of the role.

The more common of these has been one that lays the
emphasis on the warrior's physical person, resulting in a
stage projection remindful of the bull-ring style of acting
which adorned the Wilson Barrett and Sienkiewicz Chris-
tian versus Pagan melodramas of the last century and
which in that same remote era made most of the Othellos
resemble so many Zbyszkos with a pain in the groin. While
liberal traces of this interpretation still remain, a more
recent one has tended to lessen the stress on the purely
physical aspects of the role and to picture the character
as having at least a few ounces of brain, not a bad idea
since, despite some striking modern evidence to the con-
trary, Macbeth happened to be a king. The stage projec-
tion in this case has taken the form of interrupting the
earlier unrelieved bellowing with periods of meditation
at least relatively so quiet that one might hear a tholepin
drop and which have suggested the character's pained cogi-
tation in scowls of such furrowed depth that one could
plant turnips in them.

Another concept is the dimissal in still larger measure
of the physical element and the centering of the portrayal
in the character's mentality, which gives rise at times to
a performance which seems to be a muted cross between
Hamlet, John Gabriel Borkman and Abe Hummel. This
generally makes a considerable impression on the younger
critics, who believe that any actor who gives emotions a
full rein is ipso facto a ham, whereas any who does not,
even if emotionalism in full tide is called for, is to be es-
teemed as an artist of very high intelligence. There is,
also, a view of the character which shades the barbaric in
him and invests him with symptoms of a later-day civili-
zation, which latter in stage depiction assume the form of
shearing off part of the established voluminous face whis-
kers, managing a gait devoid of strutting and more like
that of a character in one of the less indignant dramas of

336 Macbeth

Eugene Brieux, and eliminating some of the conventional
booming from the voice.

Still another idea is to play Macbeth like a combination
Richard III, Ingomar and Max Schmeling, which is to say
as a consomme of the sophisticated guile of the first, the
barbaric guile of the second, and the doomed pugilism of
the third. The acting out of the idea in turn resolves itself
into a performance heavily laden with sudden vocal dimin-
uendos, indicating craftiness; intermittent abrupt changes
from strong postures to slouches, indicating certain inner
Machiavellian attributes; and periodic fiercely skeptical
shadow-boxings with oneself. This 'has been known to be
enormously successful, since, while the whole may con-
ceivably not be satisfactory to an audience, the parts in
their conciliatory nature are here and there bound to be,
and since no one is thus in the end entirely disgruntled
and everyone, indeed, left safely in some doubt as to the
entire validity of his own analysis of the role.

There are, as well, other variations, some of them super-
ficially not less eccentric, but those described are probably
the most recognizable. And all, however now and again
in whole or in share seemingly a little fatuous, may, as
hinted, be reconciled in some degree with the tangled in-
consistencies of the textual character which, full of splen-
dor as it is, nevertheless, like a star sapphire, is susceptible
to different rays of light, albeit some of a bluish tinge. For,
as Hazlitt put it, "all is tumult and disorder within and
without his mind ... he has, indeed, energy and manli-
ness of soul, but 'subject to all the skyey influences.' He
is sure of nothing. All is left at issue. He runs a-tilt with
fortune, and is baffled with preternatural riddles. The
agitation of his mind resembles the rolling of the sea in
a storm. . . ."

Each and every interpretation thus naturally has its
partisans, though the actor offering it may for one reason
or another be found wanting in the merchanting of it
and, contrarily, though there have been some actors who,
though their concepts of the role have not met with ap-
proval, have yet been acceptable in much the same way

March 31, 1948 337

that Babe Ruth always remained admired even when he
struck out. Hazlitt, while he could not abide most of
Kean's interpretation, still could not conceal his essential
admiration for him in a review which, arriving at the act-
ing of the scene after the murder, ended with the valen-
tine that "it was a scene which no one who saw it can ever
efface from his recollection/* John Forster exceptionally
could not in any degree stomach either Forrest's idea of
the role or his execution of it: "Mr. Forrest is more sing-
ularly devoid of anything like an imaginative power than
any actor we ever beheld"; but there have not been many
unqualifying Forsters. There have been many more like
Lewes who, in his review of Kean's performance, found,
like Hazlitt, that "bad as the performance was, it had its
fine points/'

The fine point generally seems to be that the confusions
of the role, while sometimes resolved by the critics to
their own satisfaction, remain sometimes unresolved when
it comes to the acting of it. Not the acting of it in what
are or should be its more obvious aspects, but the acting
of it in its more recondite particulars. These, however
much the critic may confidently imagine that he has ac-
counted to himself for them, continue to be somewhat
shadowy; they may be rightly argued from one, two, even
three viewpoints; and it is an obdurate critic indeed who
in the circumstances refuses to be persuaded of the possi-
bility of any other interpretation than his own. I have
seen some Macbeths portions of whose conception and
projection have seemed to me to be downright goosy, yet,
as I have said, I have realized that it would not be too dif-
ficult to discover at least a small measure of reason for
them in the cloudiness of the character. Three of the
worst performances I have set eyes on were those of John
E. Kellard, Philip Merivale and Lionel Barrymore, but
if one looked hard enough one could find certain ele-
ments in them that disturbingly met the severest, intelli-
gent test. And the same with the performances of Robert
B, Mantell, Ben Greet, and a number of other such de-
fectives. Novelli, in a class apart from the foregoing, on

338 Macbeth

the other hand was paradoxically most effective at those
points in his performance when his conception o the role
seemed from almost any critical position to be askew. I
was too young to have seen Forbes-Robertson in the role,
but I am told that, though his theory of it was frequently
confounding, the net effect of his performance was emi-
nently satisfying, quite as asparagus served out of course
can still be both tempting and appetizing. These are only
a few examples pro, con, and even pro-con out of many.
But they sufficiently indicate the dizziness of the whole
matter, which has equalled, if at times not exceeded, the
fluster of the Hamlet question.

The latest exponent of the role is Michael Redgrave,
the English screen actor. Though his approach to it may
in part find substantiation in the text, you will have to
search far for any substantiation of his performance of it
in any text on the art of acting. With the concurrence of
his director, Norris Houghton, he not only spends most
of the evening downstage giving the audience the cute
rolling eye and with dimpled smirk reciting his speeches
but, when forced by the more violent action upstage, pre-
sents an excellent impersonation of a circus sideshow wild
man conniving to become boss of the lot. His posturings,
furthermore, are at moments a little comical, and his sud-
den shifts from Chopin to Wagnerian utterance stand in
sore need of the ministrations of an orchestra conductor.
Many of his readings, moreover, provide sounds to marvel
at, notably in the banquet scene, where the delivery has
the effect of the voice first timidly wetting itself at a waters'
edge and then howling in childish alarm at its feel of cold,
and in the passages relating to Duncan's coming, where
the reading combines a kind of Foxy Quiller musical com-
edy hush-hush with the sort of coyly subdued physical
pantomime associated with stock company ingenues when
the juveniles overwhelm them with the long anticipated
declarations of matrimony. The colloquy with Lady Mac-
beth following the murder becomes a mere schoolroom
platform recitation made to pass for acting only in the
circumstance that the Thane is in costume and makeup.

March 31, 1948 339

The "Is this a dagger" speech is read in the style of a stage
prestidigitator prefacing a levitation act; and the "To-
morrow and tomorrow" lines with such bebop inflections
that they acquire the sound of spoken jazz.

Flora Robson's Lady Macbeth, despite an air of star
actress remoteness, is some better, but the fact remains
that the role is not the difficult one legend has made it out
to be. Women have occasionally failed in it, but any ac-
tress not too young and sufficiently experienced has not had
too much trouble in giving a pretty fair aoxmnt of it, for
all the necessity seemingly felt by some critics to analyze
the role out of its simplicity. The supporting company is
mostly without distinction and appears to have been
shoved to one side in order that the audience's atten-
tion may not be distracted too greatly from Mr. Red-
grave's chance at an Oscar. The Banquo business is well
handled and the duel scene better than usual, and the
Paul Sheriff settings are pictorial enough and of a prac-
tical flow; but the performance on the whole gets only
the thunder of the tragedy without any trace of its light-
ning.

In conclusion, part of a proclamation by Mr. Redgrave
in connection with the presentation:

Another angle we are aiming to emphasize even more
in the American production that in the London one is the
keynote of contemporary realism. Very often costume
plays in recent years have been criticized because their air
of elegance, courtliness, of a highly civilized world of vel-
vets and satins where everyone is scrubbed, scented, care-
fully combed, even the soldiers fresh from battle, gives
audiences the feeling they are watching folk in fancy dress
at a party. We are aiming in this Macbeth to reach back
into a world of semi-barbarism, to mirror accurately a
primitive people who slept in their clothes, had no time
for haircuts, who didn't shave just before a battle for their
lives. Down to the mud spattered on their boots, our
Scotsmen we hope will look like they were, a wild, violent,
strange race.

340 Macbeth

So far, good enough. But when the realistic effort to
bring Birnam Wood to Tobacco Road has its appropri-
ately costumed, tousled and bedraggled warriors lighted
by an elaborate stage electrical equipment like the actors
in Music In My Heart and a Macbeth in the person of Mr.
Redgrave who very evidently has hurried to his dressing-
room between scenes to freshen his lip rouge, the other-
wise reasonable plan goes to pieces on the reefs of ab-
surdity.

341

SIX O'CLOCK THEATRE. APRIL n, 1948

A bill of three one-act plays. Produced by the Experimen-
tal Theatre, Inc.,, for 8 performances in the Maxine Elliott
Theatre.

PROGRAM

HOPE IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

Philip Robinson

E. G. Marshall

George Mathews

Robert Alvin

WillGeer

CHAHUDE

OLD MAN NELSON
JOE

A MAN

Lou Gilbert

Daniel A. Reed

Fredric Martin

Jabez Gray

CELEBRATION

OSCAR
Doc

STEVE
WHJER
SWEENEY

REP

BABE

SONNY

MARY
LIZZIE
SPEED
ABE

NlNIAN

BRIDESMAIDS

Directors: 1. Joseph Kramm; 2. Joseph Anthony; 3. John
O'Shaughnessy.

Hilda Vaughn

ELLEN BELLE Sally Grade

Perry Wilson

TOM James Karen

Warren Stevens

AFTERNOON STORM

Helen Marcy

' Philippa Bevans

Eleanora Barrie

Ellen Herbert

Dan Morgan

Fred Stewart

John Morley

Joseph Kramm

Stanley Tackney

WEDDING GUESTS

Syl Lamont

Lynn Masters

Clement Brace

HertaWare

Ed Kaufman

Mary Patton

Joseph Kapfer

Joan DeWeese

Joseph Anthony

ANN Norma Chambers

-HE FIFTH EXPLOIT of what, to say it again, seems to be
an experimental enterprise in little more than name as-
sumed the shape of a program of three one-act plays. Be-
fore considering their nature, we may be justified in ask-
ing just where there is anything like genuine experiment
in putting on such short specimens of drama of any kind.
The American commercial and professional theatre in the

342 Six O'clock Theatre

last forty years has already produced more one-acters,
many of them deserving, than one can record without
spraining a wrist. Among the producers of them have been
such well-known managers and actors as the Lieblers,
Charles Frohman, George Tyler, Morris Gest, Henry E.
Dixey, Mrs. Fiske, James K. Hackett, Frank Keenan, Sarah
Cowell Le Moyne, Arnold Daly (with no less than three
or four separate programs), Holbrook Blinn, John C.
Wilson, and divers others. The plays have included,
among foreign dramatists, those of Rostand, Strindberg,
Schnitzler, Yeats, Browning, Zangwill, Barrie, et al. } and,
among Americans, a number of whom were tyros, the
playlets of all sorts of writers like Clay M. Greene, Julian
Street, Arthur Hornblow, George Ade, Gladys Unger,
Charles Frederic Nirdlinger, Edmund Day, John Luther
Long, C. J. Bell, Charles Kenyon, Edward Ellis, Russ
Whytal, C. M. S. McLellan, et al., and, if you must know,
about four decades ago, a particular little cabbage by a
boy named George Jean Nathan.

Non-professional groups have also been giving a hospi-
table hearing to native one-acters since and before the
Provincetown Players ventured O'Neill's cycle of short
sea plays, and vaudeville in its heyday often embraced in
its bills playlets by a variety of American and foreign play-
wrights, among them, in the American department, Bron-
son Howard, O'Neill, Richard Harding Davis, Frances
Hodgson Burnett, and lots of others. Three so-called
"museum pieces" in the way of American short plays by
John Howard Payne, Colin H. Hazelwood and John M.
Morton were presented for a month's engagement eleven
years ago in Daly's Sixty-third street house by a producer
named Verdi. The Irish Repertory Theatre offered a pro-
gram of Irish one-acters about twelve years ago, and even
the Children's Art Theatre gambled on a program of four
at about the same time. Eight years ago, Eugene Endrey
offered a bill of four down in the Provincetown Play-
house; the New York Players Company did the same the
year before, including playlets by Albert Maltz and Thorn-
ton Wilder (the same The Happy Journey recently re-

April 11, 1948 343

vived by the New Stages group) ; and the Lighthouse
Players o the New York Association For The Blind in
the same season put on three with blind young actresses
forming the casts. Another such company, the Guild Cen-
ter Players, followed suit with four one-acters 3 three by
Americans, and all similarly performed by blind players.

The late Federal Theatre duly put on short plays; the
New Theatre League sponsored two Negro groups in one-
act play programs in 1938; the Workers' Laboratory The-
atre some seasons ago produced a program of American
short plays for a successful engagement in the Nora Bayes
Theatre; the Yorke Center group followed with a program
of four; and one loses count of all the rest. In the present
season, we already had seen in the professional theatre two
bills of three brief plays each by Noel Coward and the
Jos Ferrer bill of four short Chekhov plays. I described
in an earlier chapter one of the other ventures of the Ex-
perimental Theatre as being as experimental as pouring
ketchup on beans. The present one enjoyed all the greater
experimental daring of eating the beans after the ketchup
was poured on them.

The first of the three little plays that comprised the eve-
ning was Hope Is The Thing With Feathers, by Richard
Harrity. Relatively the best of the lot, it has to do with a
group of vagrants, gathered by night in Central Park,
. whose problem is getting something to eat. One of them
evolves several schemes to snare one of the ducks floating
on the lake and, though the others deride him, persists
in his quest but haplessly winds up instead with a mon-
key. The sardonic idea plainly has possibilities, but, while
the author has realized some of them, the little play misses
full achievement on three grounds. The comments on the
breadwinner's stratagems by his fellow tramps appear
sometimes to be studiously written into the characters in-
stead of seeming to issue naturally from them; the dnoue-
ment involving the monkey, while perfectly legitimate
ironic comedy, is in the handling a little too pat and in
the nature of the tag of a musical show blackout skit; and
there is occasionally the feeling that the down-and-outers

344 Six O 9 Clock Theatre

have been observed by the author through a proscenium
arch rather than through eyes trained upon fact and actu-
ality. There is, in other words, a suspicion of Dusty
Rhodes and Nat Wills in the characters, the sense of a
slight touch of greasepaint, the comic strip, and vaude-
ville. Yet, under it all, Harrity betrays a glimmer of talent
that may develop.

The second item was Celebration, by Horton Foote, an
attempted serious picture of the degeneration of Southern
aristocracy. It is a forced and artificial job so exaggerated
that it seems to be a refugee from an old Minsky show.
There would scarcely have been any experiment in its
production even if produced as part of such a burlesque
enterprise.

The third short play was Afternoon Storm, by E. P.
Conkle, whose longer play also about the young Abraham
Lincoln, Prologue To Glory, saw local production ten
years ago. In this case, the author considers the doubts that
assail Abe regarding Mary Todd just before the marriage
ceremony. Mary is presented with a lack of sympathy bor-
dering on contempt, and Lincoln as a monologist torturedly
informing himself at some length that it isn't desirable to
marry a woman whom one doesn't love, the while being
persuaded by the spirit of the deceased Ann Rutledge that
honor is honor, that he is stuck, and that there is no other
course open to him but to lie in the bed he has made for
himself. A few moments of Abe's rationalization of his
predicament come across the footlights with some convic-
tion, but the play for the most part bogs down in a swamp
of attitudinized words.

The incidental general use of the familiar bare stage
technique hardly added to any sensational experimenta-
tion.

345

THE RATS OF NORWAY. APRIL 15, 1948

A play by Keith Winter. Produced by James S. Elliott for
4 performances in the Booth Theatre.

PROGRAM

MANN Arthur Gould-Porter

WEYLAND Victor Wood

CHETWOOD Bert Jeter

HUGH SEBASTIAN John Ireland

ROBIN CLAYDON

Colin Keith-Johnston
JANE CLAYDON Jeanne Stuart

STEVAN BERINGER William Howell
TILLY SHANE Rett Kitson

SYNOPSIS: The action of the play takes place at Fallgates, a pre-
paratory school in Northumberland, over a period of seven months. Act I.
The beginning. Act II. The middle. Act III. The end.

Director: James S. Elliott.

A

BADLY MUDDLED playwright's badly muddled play has
been even worse muddled by his producer and stage di-
rector, industriously assisted by his actors. To start, the
rats of Norway that figure in the author's symbolic title
are the lemmings the oft-told tale about which, he says,
provided the inspiration for the writing of his play. His
program note thereon is as follows:

There is a town on the coast of Norway from which, ev-
ery few years, many thousands of lemmings swim south
into the North Sea. They swim on and on until they are
all drowned. The reason for this eccentric conduct on the
part of the lemmings is that many years ago there was an
island some distance from the coast. The island is now
submerged. No lemming has ever returned to tell the tale,
so the great battalions continue to set forth on their fatal
emigration. In the play, the story centers around two pairs
of lovers, one young and romantic, the other mature and
passionate. Both are seeking blindly and with an increas-
ing desperation for a perfection of love which the very vi-
olence of their search prevents them from finding. So, like

346 The Rats of Norway

the rats of Norway, they finally drown their spiritual selves
in their quest for the impossible.

It might have profited both Mr. Winter and his play
if he had taken the trouble to explore the myth, as Bergen
Evans has in his The Natural History of Nonsense. "'The
actual lemming," he notes, "does no such thing/' referring
the skeptic to Charles Elton's Voles, Mice and Lemmings
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press) . "The march to the sea/'
he continues, "is merely a crowding into the coastal plains
o excess numbers that are periodically bred in the hills.
It is an irregular movement of individuals and often takes
years. The creatures are able to swim small streams, and
it is possible that some reach the ocean, swim out beyond
their power to return, and drown. But the grim phalanx,
the death march, the fatal instinct, and the cosmic irony
of it all axe figments of modern pessimism.^. . ." Even
Masefield, who in The Lemmings succumbed in small part
to the fable of the fatal urge, allowed, as Evans observes,
that it seizes the rodents only once in a hundred years.

Furthermore, granting Mr. Winter his faith in the truth
of the fable, he yet giddily confuses himself in the analogy
of the search for perfection of love, since it is very hard to
make out a search for perfection of any kind on the part
of the lemmings, who are concerned simply with getting
a foothold on dry land. This is not to say that the author's
thesis, apart from the superstition, may not be reasonable
enough. That violence in a search for perfection of love
may very well prevent its achievement and bring ultimate
pain is probably not questioned by experts in such mat-
ters. Nor doubtless is the argument that such perfection
is impossible. But Mr. Winter so quickly loses all grasp
of the idea and so rattles himself that the theme flies right
out the window, flapping its tin wings like a mechanical
toy bird and making noises like a corkscrew trying vainly
to open a bottle of soda pop. His older couple, for ex-
ample, far from any noticeable search for perfection in
their amorous attachment, are selfishly concerned, on the
female side, with financial security and the safeguarding

April 15, 1948 347

of social position, and, on the male, largely with an ob-
jection to the discomforts of al fresco cohabitation. And
his younger pair imply that it is not perfection they are
intent upon but, on the female side, rather the safety to
be had in a speedy marriage and, on the male, the avoid-
ance of the sexual act and the equally puzzling quest of
a woman who will determinedly refuse to mold herself to
his tastes and prejudices. In other words, what the charac-
ters actually impress one as being after, in the case of both
couples, is not perfection but imperfection, which, if wit-
tily handled, might have made a much more intelligent
and better play.

The author's dramaturgical technique, which follows
the old German custom of alternately bringing on the
couples to conduct their colloquies, only adds to the feel-
ing that what is going on on the stage is not so much a play
as a series of static duologues. And when at rare moments
there is the faint suspicion of a play, the director does
everything possible to allay it. He also, in his capacity of
producer, has augmented the over-all jumble by publish-
ing in the program brief accounts of the various charac-
ters which fail to dovetail with the characters one sees on
the stage. The faculty member in love with the head-
master's wife, for example, is described as one "who clings
to reality as a drowning man would to a life-preserver,"
whereas the play reveals him as one who seeks desperately
to avoid reality in drink* The wife, it is noted, is a woman
''whose brains make up for Robin's (her husband's) in-
effectualness," but the stage shows her as having no brains
whatsoever. And so with several of the others.

It is of course possible that Mr. Winter's play, which
was produced successfully fifteen years ago in England, has
been edited by other hands into a measure of its present
disorder. Some of the dialogue certainly does not sound
as if it had been written by the author of The Shining
Hour, which at least was literate. I am told, indeed, that
his novel of the same title from which he derived the play
had points of merit. But the exhibit as we here get it
is garbled at times into a dramatic and thematic chaos

348 The Rats of Norway

that offers, among its other contradictions, a potential
homosexuality in the two men who are presented by the
dramatist as fiercely possessed of passion for their lady
loves.

The acting company could scarcely be worse, though
direction must take its full share of the blame. Colin
Keith- Johnston, ordinarily a congenial actor, indicates the
elderly gravity of the headmaster of the boys* school
mainly by pressing his chin down hard upon his collar
and issuing such sounds as suggest he has swallowed an
operatic dog. John Ireland plays the headmaster's wife's
moody lover by withholding his chin from his collar but
nonetheless managing to issue sounds not materially dis-
similar; and stage direction has further imposed upon him
the necessity, when a heart attack overcomes him, of fall-
ing with a crash upon the keyboard of a piano, a piece of
business one thought had abandoned the theatre for the
films years ago. As the philandering spouse, Jeanne Stuart
spends the evening composing herself into a series of aloof
living pictures, which, I take it, are supposed to denote
her mental superiority to the other characters but which
insinuate rather that the actress is so fascinated by herself
that she is rooted admiringly to the spot. William Howell
and Rett Kitson, as the younger couple, perform as if a
big television show were going on in the auditorium and
as if they were so engrossed by it that the play, to their
obvious impatience, gets in their way. Of the others, only
Victor Wood, in the role of a cynical member of the fac-
ulty, manages not to be too silly.

When they come across a review like this, various critics
of these annuals are in the habit of deploring what they
uniformly allude to as "Mr. Nathan's occasional savage-
ness/' Certainly not in any extenuation but just for the
fun of it, I quote from my more charitable colleagues'
opinions of the play:

The more genteel Mr. Atkinson, in the Times: 'In time
the actors and the audience will recover, but at the mo-
ment the play, which was dumped on the stage at the

April 15, 1948 349

Booth, seems to have added ten years to the life of every-
one on both sides of the footlights."

The more benevolent Mr. Watts, in the Post: "Terrible
. . . dull . . . ridiculous. One of the most incredible
things in writing, direction and acting encountered all
season."

The more tender-hearted Mr. Barnes, in the Herald
Tribune: "It takes a number of factors to drive a lot of
first-nighters out of their seats before a final curtain. The
Rats Of Norway has them. A ridiculous script badly acted,
woefully staged and preposterously designed. A series of
cliches which defy description."

The more spirituel Mr, Morehouse, in the Sun: "Dread-
ful stuff. A dull and doltish play, and the acting is fairly
monstrous. Everything is woeful and doleful and the final
curtain falls on tragedy. It just didn't fall soon enough.
One of the most frightful performances a cast of profes-
sional grown-ups has given in my time."

The more indulgent Mr. Chapman, in the Daily News:
"An occasion of acute discomfort, like double pneu-
monia."

The more benign Mr. Garland, in the Journal- Ameri-
can: "Even two-legged British lemmings couldn't be as
dim-witted as their trans-Atlantic setup makes them out
to be."

The more forbearing Mr. Hawkins, in the World-Tele-
gram: "The general lack of civility is simply offensive.
Trite . . . embarrassing. Gives the feeling of a period
piece and sounds as if the radio and telephone had not
yet been invented."

The more beneficent, compassionate and merciful Mr.
Coleman, in the Daily Mirror: "The biggest bore of the
season. The curtain seemed as if it never would fall. The
running time is npt excessive, but an evening at the Booth
seems like a veritable lifetime. Packed with cliches which
sent the first-nighters into spasms of laughter, that is, those
first-nighters who suffered from insomnia and the on-stage
noises. How the actors waded through Winter's stilted,

350 The Rats of Norway

pretentious twaddle without howling is a mystery. They
must have wonderful control of their facial muscles. If
any organization has a spare medal around for the most
feeble and futile play of the season, they might consider
The Rats Of Norway"

351

TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. APRIL 18, 1948

A play by Eva Wolas. Produced by New Stages, Inc., for
2 weeks' performances in the New Stages Theatre.

PROGRAM

ADAM Anthony Randall

MICHAEL

Raymond Edward Johnson
ZILLAH Judy Somerside

WOMAN Jean GUlespie

(Florence James
George Stephens
Georgette Clark

SYNOPSIS: Act I. An early morning. Act II. Scene 1. Tea time;
one week later. Scene 2. That evening. Act III. The following morning.
Scene: The Palace Primeval.
Director: Ezra Stone.

.y FIRST SORTIE into belles-lettres, at the ripe age of
ten, like that of many other school children was what I
was pleased to speak of as an "essay" on Adam and Eve.
And one of my earliest theatrical recollections, of the
same period, is of either a Charles Yale or Hanlon Broth-
ers extravaganza I can't quite remember which that
opened with a scene in the Garden of Eden. While I do
not profess to be an expert in the Freudian metaphysic,
it is my guess that the tale's spell over youngsters lies in
what seems to them its scandalous nature, and it is not a
guess but a certainty that what has appealed to musical
show producers about it has been the chance it has af-
forded them to present, safe from moralist interference,
the spectacle of a female in a state approximating the al-
together. Since a number of such American and European
producers have not been much advanced beyond adoles-
cence, the stage has duly regaled us from time to time with
the old papier-mich.6 trees and bushes, the green grass
mat, the rubber snake coiled in the foliage, and, for double
safety behind a scrim, the show-girl either in a skin-tight
white silk union suit or with her virginal body covered
with enough whitewash to plaster the Sistine Chapel, and

352 To Tett You the Truth

in both cases with a fig leaf the amplitude of the coco-
palm species coyly attached to her center. So enticed, in-
deed, has the musical stage been by the idea that only the
scene in Hell has outfavored it, and the dramatic stage,
in each instance, has rivalled if not surpassed it, though
somewhat more circumspectly in an anatomical direction.
From twelfth century plays like Le Mystere d'Adam to
seventeenth like Adam In Exile, that stage in far days
fondled the idea with a motherly affection, and the affec-
tion has continued into modern times with all kinds of
performances from Shaw's Back To Methuselah to Capek's
Adam The Creator and from one such Broadway para-
phrase as the Bolton-Middleton Adam And Eva to another.
All but a notable few have approached the theme more or
less obviously, and all without exception have very evi-
dently been tempted to it by the comparative novelty of
its background, which at least in these later years has
plainly come to enjoy all the newfandanglement of the
Hell business.

Miss Wolas is the latest playwright to be overcome by
the moldy conceit, and her treatment of it, if it must be
told, is as sallow as can be imagined, even by a fancy with
the wings of an eagle. From the beginning, when she pro-
ceeds from the orthodox battle-between-the-sexes view-
point, to the middle, when she indulges in the old stuff
about Adam and Eve discovering, to their surprise and
pleasure, the physical perquisites of love, and on to the
end, when Adam is banished from Eden for his sin and
Eve follows him on the road to a future Cecil B. DeMille
movie, there is not the slightest wit, taste, or invention. I
do not wish overly to boast, but I have a feeling that that
school-boy essay of mine which, as I recall, drew an anal-
ogy, if excessively juvenile, between Adam and Eve and
Crown Prince Rudolf and Marie Vetsera, the great ro-
mantic scandal of the day, was at least a little more fertile *
in originality.

Miss Wolas' details are not less of a starkly unimagina-
tive nature. Her Adam has visions of Woman as being
lighted by the stars, only subsequently to find her a com-

April 18, 1948 353

monplace, practical and nagging creature. Her Eve, follow-
ing the cut-and-dried modern historical spoof pattern, is
pictured as being identical with a present day messing
housewife. Her Serpent, as may be guessed, is a kinder-
garten raisonneur out of a Mae West saucepot who coun-
sels Adam that the best way to go about handling Eve is
to get down quickly to what may euphemistically be
termed bedrock. And she has her last curtain fall on the
twain's exit into the world with the hint that they will go
on bickering until the end of time. In the whole there is
no trace of illumination save that provided by the stage's
electrical switchboard, which doesn't work any too well at
that.

The style in which the play is written pursues that fav-
ored by contemporary writers of drugstore shelf anachron-
istic fiction, which is to say a mixture of the vernacular,
Biblical quotations, and the kind of sex suggestiveness
once miscellaneously sprayed over the local stage by the
Wilson Collison school of farce plumbers. The characters
are drawn and played much as their counterparts were in
the college musicals of our youth, though girls here act the
girl roles in place of boys. The Serpent is thus a young
woman clad in a sausage-skin of black lace who depicts
Temptation by slinking around the stage like Harpo Marx
in lascivious underwear and making wicked eyes at
Michael, the guardian angel. Eve, when Adam begins to
show signs of restlessness, duly restimulates his interest by
arching a bare shoulder at him and simultaneously un-
covering her leg up to the legal limit. Adam is the antici-
pated combination of Keith Winter protagonist and La
Belle Hdldne caricature. And Michael, like the play alto-
gether, misses only the wires to pull him out of sight into
the flies.

354

THE CUP OF TREMBLING. APRIL 20, 1948

A dramatization by Louis Paul of his novel., Breakdown.
Produced by Paul Czinner and C. P. Jaeger for 31 perform-
ances in the Music Box.

PROGRAM

MRS. BOSSHARDT Beverly Bayne
ELLEN CROY Elisabeth Bergner

DR. BROEN Philip Tonge

JOHN CROY Mi llard Mitchell
WALTER FOWLER John Carradine

JAMESSON Louis Hector

ANN Iris Mann

A POLICE OFFICER Robert Bolger
A DELIVERY MAN

William Robertson
DR. DENNING Martin Wolf son

WILLIAM LXJNDEMAN Anthony Ross
PEEWEE U. T. Atherton

SHEILA VANE Arlene Francis

GRACIE Hope Emerson

SYNOPSIS: Act I. Scene 1. The Croys* apartment, 10 p.m. Friday.
Scene 2. Walter Fowler's home, Saturday afternoon, six weeks later.
Scene 3. The Croys' apartment, that night. Scene 4. The same, next
morning. Scene 5. The same, late the following afternoon. Act II. Scene
1. Dr. Dennings office, afternoon, ten days later. Scene 2. Lundeman's of-
fice, early the same evening. Scene 3. The Croys 9 apartment, a few days
later.

Director: Paul Czinner,

E,

JLISABETH BERGNER, it has come to be recognized, is an
actress of mannerisms all compact. As a student of man-
nerisms, I lay proud claim to some experience, since
among those of many others which I have investigated I
may number my own, which at times have been known so
to irritate people that they have catapulted themselves
from my presence with such precipitant haste that at least
thirty, including a child of ten, have tripped over one
another in the grand rush and broken their legs. Miss
Bergner may be no more conscious of hers than I, alas,
have been of mine but, unlike me, she has the misfortune
to have to make a living out of the public on a stage and,
if only a relative handful of the public can't stand mine
in private, I don't see how she can expect any such hand-
ful to be multiplied into box-office thousands by eccen-

April 20, 1948 355

tricities which far exceed even my own, adequately vexa-
tious, I blush to record, as they seem to be.

As in Miss Bergner's case, I am sorry to report that I
seem to be most unacceptable when I secretly imagine
that I am most fascinating, and, also like her, I am ap-
parently least desirable when in my own estimation I am
little short of irresistible. The difference between us is
that, being a critic by profession, I am able to recognize
what is wrong with me, though I can't help myself, and
that she, being like almost any other actress without the
critical gift, isn't able to do any such thing, doubtless ad-
mires her behavioristic frillery, and probably wouldn't do
anything about it if she could.

Though her well-meaning critics have been pointing
out to Miss Bergner for a long time now that her manifold
affectations are damaging to her stage impression, she con-
tinues to go sublimely on her way and year after year per-
mits them seriously to weaken the effect of her perform-
ances. Like some other actresses who are convinced, some-
times rightly, that the critics do not know what they are
talking about and that, even if they do, it is beneath an
actress' dignity to listen to them, she will not unlearn
what, in her case, she inexpediently learned under German
direction in the days of her Berlin career and, unlearning,
adapt herself more accommodatingly and a lot more wor-
thily to an American stage where her idiosyncrasies seem
all too exaggerated and even invested with something of a
burlesque sauce.

At this point, however, I am beset by the feeling that
perhaps I am doing her a slight injustice and that it is pos-
sible she may at last be realizing the danger of her ex-
cesses. The feeling overcomes me in view of the character
of this most recent play which she has elected as a vehicle.
It is conceivable that the central role in it, that of a female
alcoholic, struck her by its very nature as a legitimate
cover-up of and apology for her fantastic singularities,
since even the dumbest critic might have a deal of trouble
finding fault with the physical and vocal peccadillos of an
actress playing the role of a woman on the road to delirium

356 The Cup of Trembling

tremens. If Miss Bergner did this deliberately, I tender her
my congratulations on her shrewdness, even if the play she
has chosen gives me the heebie-jeebies along with her. It
makes all her bad acting attributes seem under the dra-
matic circumstances to be a proper part of the role which
she portrays; it converts her irritating artificialities into
logical appurtenances of the boozy character; and it fools
many members of her audience into believing that, as
with the late Henry Irving in A Story Of Waterloo, she is
an artist extraordinary when what she analytically is is
rather only a second-rate actress more or less successfully
concealing the fact in a role manufactured for that very
purpose.

Mr. Paul's play is based on his novel, Breakdown, which
was another of the numerous recent recesses from litera-
ture picturing the horrible consequences of alcoholic in-
dulgence. The play is even worse than the book. The plot
may easily be guessed: the woman who gradually finds
herself in the grip of the bottle, her disintegration, the
futile attempts of her loved ones to rehabilitate her, and
her eventual redemption at the combined hands of psy-
chiatry, the organization known as Alcoholics Anonymous,
and the author. To work my own redemption after it was
all over required the combined hands of two bartenders.

Miss Bergner's great success with past German audiences
has often been a source of local speculation. I think it may
be explained in at least one direction. It has been com-
monly believed as an article of the American Credo that
the Germans* admiration was always reserved for women
and actresses who most closely resembled over-developed
beer barrels, both fore and aft, or what is known in our
lingo as the Hausfrau type, and that any one of some physi-
cal delicacy was impatiently waved aside as an ogre. Like
many other American ideas about foreigners, the theory
has small basis in fact. Far from a distaste for the more
unsubstantial specimens of femininity, of which Miss
Bergner was one, the German in those days and before, as
doubtless still, elected just such German women, aside
from any acting ability, as his favorites, both on the stage

April 20, 1948 357

and screen. I name a few in illustration: Helene Thimig,
Lillian Harvey, Renate Mueller, Hertha Thiele, Marlene
Dietrich, Camilla Horn, Meta Illing, Gertrud Eysold,
Maria Orska . . .

Anyone who knew Berlin in the years between the
Kaiser's reign and the rise of Hitler need hardly be in-
formed on such matters. For the Germans then and it
was in that period that the young Bergner came to emi-
nence had the same affectionate eye to slender loveli-
ness that we have and did not, as the comic strip historians
would have us think, reserve their personal ecstasy solely
for the talented tubs of lard who disported themselves in
the classical drama and on the grand opera stage.

The acting of the supporting company and Czinner's
stage direction are as spurious as the playwright's apparent
theory that a person suffering from alcoholomania may be
completely cured, restored to perfect health, and delivered
into the lap of God in little more than a week.

S58

THE PLAY'S THE THING. APRIL 28, 1948

A revival of the comedy by Ferenc Molndr, adapted by
P. G. Wodehouse. Produced by Gilbert Miller in associa-
tion with James Russo and Michael Ellis at the season's
end for indeterminate performances in the Booth Theatre.

PROGRAM

ILONA SZABO Faye Emerson

ALMADY Arthur Margetson

SANDOR TURAI Louis Cdhern

MANSKY Ernest Cossart

ALBERT ADAM Richard Hylton

JOHANN DWOKNTTSCHEK

Frauds Compton
SYNOPSIS; The three acts are laid in a room in a castle on the
Italian Riviera.

Director: Gilbert Mitter.

MEIX Claud Attister

( Fred Wentler

LACKEYS t TedPaterson

ONLY a great deal of water has passed under the
bridge since the comedy was first shown here in 1926, but
on its surface has floated so many plays-within-plays that
the comparative novelty of the piece has become a bit
gray at the edges. I say comparative because the play-
within-a-play device, together with the written evolution
of the play within the play as in this case, was already
familiar to local audiences before Molndr again employed
it. It was indeed already familiar considerably previous to
its repeated use by the Messrs. Hamilton and Thomas in
The Big Idea back in 1914, and how many times it has
been resorted to since and before Sheridan by playwrights
both in America and Europe only a toilsome search
through the records would disclose. Molnir's handling of
it is superior to most, since he is a man of style and wit,
and his comedy, for all its dramaturgical dust in that di-
rection, consequently still contributes to the theatre a
pleasant evening.

The plot, it may be recalled, deals with a young com-
poser who, accompanied by two older friends who are his

April 28, 1948 359

collaborators on his first undertaking in the operetta line,
unexpectedly one night visits the habitat of a well-known
prima donna to whom he is affianced. From her bedroom
issues conversation with one of her former lovers the tone
of which the young man can not mistake and which
prompts him in his disillusion to contemplate suicide. To
save him from his mortal despair, one of his collaborators,
a playwright, persuades the deceitful lady of his sentimen-
tal passion and her lover to help him work out a short play
in which the incriminating sexual conversation will figure
as part of the dialogue. The little play is subsequently
acted; the young composer is overwhelmed by joy to learn
that his suspicions were base and that his beloved was
simply rehearsing the dialogue when he eavesdropped the
bedroom doings; and all ends commodiously.

It is plainly as difficult to attend any such trick play
twice and still be held by it as it is to be held a second
time by any mystery or detective play. In this instance,
however, the playwright's delicate waggery serves to make
one not too greatly conscious of the trick machinery, and,
as noted, the evening is hence much more acceptable than
in the case of most similar plays. For, in addition to the
author's smooth jocosity, there is for anyone professionally
interested in drama his uncommon skill in technique. The
trick itself may be all too recognizable, but the way in which
it is done is so dexterous that it becomes a fascinating trick
on its own account.

Though Hungarian is a language omitted from my ed-
ucation, I had always suspected, despite assurances to the
contrary, that the play had not only been toned down for
local consumption in its bedroom episode but that some
of the humor in it was so little like Molndr that it was
probably incorporated by the adapter. My suspicion has
been confirmed by Professor Emro Joseph Gergely in his
recently published treatise on Hungarian drama produced
in New York in the 19081940 period. He points out that
some of the original spicy dialogue has been softened and
also that the adapter has interpolated some humor of his
own, as, for example, such passages as

360 The Plays the Thing

Why are you so late?
I fell down stairs, sir.
Well, that oughn't to have taken you so long.

And, when the butler serves an elaborate breakfast with
the observation, "It was a labor of love, sir. My heart is in
that breakfast," Turai's reply, "Your heart, too?"

While the present company in the aggregate is not as
finished as the earlier one (at this point let me say that if
the customary worm either contends that memory is play-
ing pranks on me or, worse, that I am one of those old
duffers who arbitrarily believe that what they saw in the
past is always better than what they see today, I'll step on
him) , it is in fair degree accommodating enough. Some of
the sheen and gloss is missing, and a little more ease
wouldn't hurt, but, in view of everything, it will do very
well, particularly as regards the Messrs. Margetson, who
as usual proves himself to be a first-rate comedian, Cal-
hern, and Allister, who has been resurrected from the orig-
inal troupe.

361

INSIDE U.S.A. APRIL 30, 1948

A revue with music by Arthur Schwartz , lyrics by Howard
DietZj and sketches by Arnold B. Horwitt, Moss Hart, and
Arnold Auerbach. Produced by Arthur Schwartz at the
close of the season for indeterminate performances in the
Century Theatre.

PRINCIPALS

Beatrice .Lillie, Jack Haley, Estelle Loring, John Tyers, Thelma Carpen-
ter, Valerie Bettis, Eric Victor, Carl Reiner, Jane Lawrence, William Le-
Massena, Lewis Nye, and Herb Shriner.

Directors: Robert H. Gordon and Helen Tamiris.

.Y SENTIMENTAL AFFECTION for the female sex in the
mass, if manifestly not in the particular, is of an enormity
almost equal to that which I feel for Philadelphia scrapple
and people who kick dogs. But, whatever its lamentable
lack of volume, it still remains sufficient to make me gag
at most women who offer themselves on the stage as low
comedians. There is something about the spectacle of such
wornen making obscene cartoons of themselves that is not
only far from funny but that, though I am not an overly
fastidious man, has much the same effect on me as the
smell of banana oil. Since most of those who follow the
peculiar profession are gargoyles to begin with, the view
of any such one exaggerating her countenance and person
into the semblance of an even more hideous monstrosity
is not what I would enthusiastically describe as priceless
humor. And when the gargoyle further adds to the picture
the croaks, yelps, howls, leaps, grimaces and physical con-
tortions concomitant with the stage species, my pleasure is
comparable to that which I might derive from a bad case
of hookworm.

There are, I am aware, men who feel differently and
who find themselves highly entertained by anatomical
ugliness, sexless ferocity and debased femininity masquer-

362 Inside U.S.A.

ading as comedy. And on the rare occasions when for a
moment or two the material is sharply relevant to the
spectacle I can understand their reaction, in a measure.
But in the general run the material isn't anything of the
kind and is further of the sort that would be pretty toxif-
erous even if performed by the most beautiful woman in
the world, and all that consequently remains is the pa-
thetic vision of a woman befouling every possible appe-
tizing quality of her sex and in the process sickening all
but the sourest misogynist.

One of the few exceptions to the genre is Beatrice Lillie.
Not only is she agreeable to the gaze in the suitable biologi-
cal departments, but she is so exceptionally endowed with
the comic gift that she has no need, as have many of her
sister professionals, for indulgence in obstreperous gro-
tesqueries to hide an absence of it. She can accomplish more
with a flutter of the hand than they can with their entire
repertory of physical gyrations, and more with the simple
wink of an eye than they are able to with all their raucous
vocal bursts, displays of gnarled knees, and savage facial
distortions. She is able, in short, to be amusing without de-
forming her person; she can make one laugh without the
disturbing consciousness that one is laughing at a cripple;
and she can entertain with no recourse to the wit of an
anatomy clinic. Happily assisted by Jack Haley, a sprightly
comedian in his own right, she, with him, works wonders
with a show that short of the twain might find itself in
large difficulties, even though it contains several assistant
performers of merit. But since it is not the business of a
reviewer to depress himself with such possibilities and
rather his duty to report on matters as they are, the eve-
ning by and large may be said to be passable enough.
After all, the world we live in may have many things
wrong with it, but one can nevertheless find elements in
it to amuse if one looks hard enough.

Looking thus into this show, there* are several good
songs, one or two fairly diverting sketches, some rousing
dancing by Valerie Bettis, and a nightingale in the person
of Estelle Loring with a fresh green salad appearance, all

April 30, 1948 363

of which, I suppose, should suffice to make up for its arid
spots. Not much imagination has gone into the evening,
but imagination is a quality that has not been too visible
in most of our revues for some years now, and its presence
might conceivably upset audiences who apparently do not
like comfortable habit to be disturbed. Though, for ex-
ample, the show is supposed to be based on John Gun-
ther's exploratory tome of the same title, its only relation
to it is a few ditties with such titles as "Come To Pitts-
burgh" and "Rhode Island Is Famous For You/' and
some scenic backdrops faintly picturing various cities like
New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. The whole
hasn't even the coherence of the several past shows based
on Jules Verne's Around The World In Eighty Days and
less even than the ones that have borne such local titles as
About Townj On The Town, and Make Mine Manhattan.

It is not my job to rewrite musical revues, but it might
have been suggested to the authors that there was a pos-
sibly available satiric idea in indicating through a shifting
American panorama that New Yorkers, for all their much
touted sophistication, are not at bottom any different from
the people in Bugtussle, Texas, that the balloon-busting
nights at the Stork Club have their counterpart in the
bubb'le-busting nights at Herman's Tip-Top Tavern in
Pascagoula, Mississippi, and that there are more native
born New Yorkers in Omaha than are left in New York.
Inside U.S. A. as it stands is for the most part simply Inside
Glen MacDonough or inside any of the other writers like
Harry B. Smith, Edgar Smith, George V. Hobart, Sydney
Rosenfeld, et al> who were concocting revues at the turn
of the century.

But, as I have often remarked, one no more goes to such
a show in a strictly critical mood than Leigh Hunt went
to a cock-fight. When it is good, there is nothing to com-
plain about, and when it isn't you can divert yourself by
looking at one of the prettier girls. You go, in a word, not,
unless you are inexperienced in such things, in the hope of
being stimulated by wit and novelty but much as you go
to visit a tolerable old aunt, in the hope of getting at least

364 Inside U.S.A.

a few cookies and, if the old girl is 'a relative on your
father's side, maybe even a bit o a tipple. It isn't so bad,
at that, particularly, in both cases, if and when a good-
looking daughter happens to appear on the premises.

And so, since these annuals conclude their reports with
the dawn of the first of May, another theatrical year ended.

You are now, ladies and gentlemen, about to get the
most seditious communique ever put into print by a dra-
matic critic at the conclusion of any such period. At the
close of each season, as you are only too well aware, it has
long been customary for members of the clique to pull
out of the mothballs the old testimony as to how weary
they are after ten months spent in the artificial world of
make-believe and what a rapturous relief it will be to
betake themselves back to nature, whether in the country,
the seaside or foreign parts, where the welcome smell of
fresh earth and reality will assuage their souls. I am now
soon also about to take leave of the theatre for a while and,
along with the others, to seek a holiday among the bees
and the flowers and, as for me, I say the hell with it. I am
fed up not only on the bees and the flowers but on the
seaside and foreign parts, and I would not mind it a whit
and would even enjoy it if some good plays were over-
night to be announced for immediate production which
would keep me right here. I would get a deal more pleas-
ure and rest any day looking at an interesting play or an
amusing show than fighting against bugs and mosquitoes,
cutting my feet on beach pebbles and colliding with
squashy jellyfish, or paying fifteen dollars for a sliver of
horse-meat slathered with oleomargarine mayonnaise in a
Paris black market restaurant. And it would be much bet-
ter all around for what is left of my soul.

But not, apparently, for the colleagues, to hear them
tell it. Even the least of them, come this time of the year,
seem suddenly to become nature lovers, and with such a

April SO, 1948 365

passion for the highroad and wide open spaces as has not
been matched since Fra Diavolo. The running brooks, an
acquaintance with which has previously been confined to
the Leone restaurant's fish stream or the outdoor garden
at the Ritz, promptly acquire a consuming fascination for
them, though dampness of any kind in the ten earlier
months has disturbed their sinuses to the point of un-
speakable agony. The sound of the sea waves, which for
years they have loftily ridiculed when it has reached their
ears in plays like Granite, 'Ception Shoals, South Pacific,
and even Medea, becomes irresistible to them. And foreign
parts which presently offer all the comforts of a third-rate
American slum suddenly achieve in their eyes an over-
whelming allure.

They can have them. While, like them, I am off to the
wilds from long habit, I should a lot rather stay put. I
shall come back, I know, with a sun tan which will per-
suade idiots that, since I look so well externally, I must
be as physically fit on the whole as a youth of twenty. I
shall lie that I had a wonderful time, that there is nothing
like getting away from the grind for a spell to reinspirit
one with the old pepper, and (with the usual wicked
wink) that I met no less than a dozen girls of enough ani-
mal magnetism to put Ringlings' circus out of business. I
shall have spent all my money, sprained an ankle or two,
eaten a lot of foul food, protestingly drunk cocktails made
of indecent gin> suffered a wrecked sacroiliac from sleep-
ing on corduroy mattresses, and been bitten on the eyelid
by a wasp. What is more, it will take me at least two
months to get back to writing anything that will conceiv-
ably be worth reading.

In the several volumes of The American Credo which
I published years ago, I seem to have failed to include,
among the innumerable beliefs and superstitions of my
fellow-countrymen, this nonsense about vacations. Yet
more than almost any other, it continues to exercise its
witchery over them. It is not, I daresay, that most people
honestly feel the necessity for a holiday. It is rather that
it has become traditional that they take the holiday

366 inside USA.

whether they wish to or not, and so they obediently go
through the annual routine much as they automatically
make an annual shambles of often gratuitous house-clean-
ing. Nor is it by any means only the congenital sheep who
succumb to the buncombe. There surely has never been a
dramatic critic it is with such that I am principally
dealing who has been more intelligently, even asser-
tively, independent, most of the time, than Bernard Shaw.
Yet in the end he deferred to the temptations of the manure
belt like the rest of his craft.

It is thus when tradition demands of me that I leave all
the comforts of home, all the fascination and ease and en-
joyment of the city, and reluctantly drag myself away to
regions beyond, that a profound dejection settles upon
me. After an hour or two of lying under the trees and
staining my trousers with an ineradicable green, I would
welcome the relief of even another Dr. Social. After get-
ting my mouth and ears full of salt water and enough sand
in my hair to fill all the cigarette extinguishing jardi-
nieres in the Waldorf-Astoria, I yearn for another look at
even The Rats of Norway. And going to bed in London
on sheets so watery from fog that I expect the Rhine
maidens to start singing any moment, or languishing in
the gardens of the Tuileries on a bench souvenired by
several babies, or getting dysentery from the quarts of
olive oil on everything in Italy these, too, are scarcely
the sort of raptures that compensate me for what I have
left behind.

I have not the slightest doubt that much of the success
of John Gielgud's revival of The Importance Of Being
Earnest was attributable to Wilde's animadversions on the
country, since it is one of the well-known characteristics of
Americans that they enjoy laughing at things which re-
flect on themselves and their habits. It was, accordingly,
that those critics who profess never to be so blissful as
when they are sleeping next to a horse, preferably Per-
cheron, or a cow, laughed most handsomely at such lines as
"When one is in town one amuses oneself; when one is in
the country one amuses other people; it is excessively bor-

April 30, 1948 367

ing." By and large, nevertheless, the fact remains that these
brethren have actually cajoled themselves into believing
that the country is all that the poets, especially those who
have never left London, Paris, Venice or New York, have
claimed for it. It is these brethren who persuade them-
selves that the birds at Wopplehauser's Crossing sing more
beautifully than ever did Geraldine Farrar, that the moon
in the heavens above Mead's Corners, New Jersey, is al-
ways more golden than Jo Mielziner's, and that the flowers
in Putchnick Falls, Pa., are more luxuriant than those in
Wadley and Smythe's. My blessings on them, and may
they rest in peace. Cockney that I have come to be, I will
give them all the dripping ceilings, out-of-order plumbing,
unskimmed milk, damp walls, stuck bureau drawers, mos-
quitoes, pictures of a stag at bay, rutted roads, soggy bread,
sleep-destroying crickets and roosters, oil lamps, outhouses,
cow profiterolles, three-day-old newspapers, rainy Sundays,
stewed chicken, greenheaded flies, spiders and the rest of
the bucolic delights for one little room and bath at the St.
Regis, with the bar not too far away, with the floor waiter
handy, and with the orchestra below playing Tales From
The Vienna Woods.

369

Especially Interesting Performances

LOVE FOR LOVE

Cyril Ritchard
Pamela Brown
Jessie Evans

THE HEIRESS

Basil Rathbone

COMMAND DECISION

Paul Kelly
Stephen Elliott
Paul Ford
James Whitmore
James Holden

DUET FOR TWO
HANDS

Francis L. Sullivan

MAN AND SUPERMAN
Frances Rowe

MEDEA

Judith Anderson

AN INSPECTOR CALLS

Melville Cooper
John Buckmaster
Rend Ray

POWER WITHOUT
GLORY

Marjorie Rhodes

STRANGE BED-
FELLOWS
Doris Rich

MAKE MINE MAN-
HATTAN
David Burns

THE LAST DANCE

Oscar Homolka
THE RESPECTFUL
PROSTITUTE

Meg Mundy

JOHN BULL'S OTHER
ISLAND

Hilton Edwards
GHOSTS

Alfred Ryder
THE OLD LADY SAYS
"NO!"

Micheal MacLiammoir
MR. ROBERTS

Henry Fonda

Robert Keith

David Wayne
THE DRUID CIRCLE

Leo G. Carroll

Ethel Griffies

Neva Patterson
THE WINSLOW BOY

Alan Webb

Frank Allenby
FOR LOVE OR MONEY

June Lockhart

ANTONY AND CLEO-
PATRA

Godfrey Tearle
A STREETCAR NAMED
DESIRE

Jessica Tandy
Marlon Brando
Karl Maiden

370

THE GENTLEMAN THE HALLAMS

FROM ATHENS Mildred Wall

Lou Polan
CRIME AND PUNISH-

MENT

T/7 j- * o L 7 t Arthur Margetson

Vladimir Sokoloff &

VOLPONE INSIDE U.S.A.

John Carradine Beatrice Lillie

Index of Plays

Afternoon Storm, 341

Allegro, 100

Angel In The Wings, 185

Angel Street, 219

Antony and Cleopatra, 158

Bear, The, 252

Caribbean Carnival, 168
Celebration, 341
Chekhov Bill, A, 252
Church Street, 258
Command Decision, 63
Cradle Will Rock, The, 195
Crime And Punishment, 190
Cup Of Trembling, The, 354

Dear Judas, 77

Doctor Social, 267

D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, 207

Druid Circle, The, 116

Duet For Two Hands, 81

Eastward In Eden, 146

First Mrs. Fraser, The, 141
For Love or Money, 135

Galileo, 177

Gentleman From Athens, The, 181

Ghosts, 275

Hallams, The, 315
Happy Journey, The, 260
Harvest Of Years, 220
Heads Or Tails, 6
Hedda Gabler, 300
Heiress, The, 55

High Button Shoes, 95
Hoboes In Heaven, 119
Hope Is The Thing With Feathers,

34i
How I Wonder, 59

Icetime of 1948, 18
I Gotta Get Out, 43
Inside U.S.A., 361
Inspector Calls, An, 113

John Bull*s Other Island, 262
Joy To The World, 327

Kathleen, 249

Lamp At Midnight, 188

Last Dance, The, 241

Laura, 34

Linden Tree, The, 310

Long Way From Home, A, 255

Look, Ma, I'm Dancin*!, 246

Louisiana Lady, 24

Love For Love, 13

Macbeth, 334

Magic Touch, The, 41

Make Mine Manhattan, 230

Man And Superman, 84

Me And Molly, 306

Medea, 104

Medium, The, 3

Men We Marry, The, 235

Mister Roberts, 283

Music In My Heart, 67

No Exit, 30

11

Old Lady Says "No!", The, 279
On The Harmfulness Of Tobacco,

252

Open House, 26
Our Lan', 47

Piaf Continental Entertainers, 124
Play's The Thing, The, 358
Portrait In Black, 10
Power Without Glory, 223

Rats Of Norway, The, 345
Respectful Prostitute, The, 258
Respectfully Yours, 8
Rip Van Winkle, 37

Six O'Clock Theatre, 341
Skipper Next To God, 211
Strange Bedfellows, 227
Streetcar Named Desire, A, 163
Survivors, The, 237

Index of Plays

Telephone, The, 3

Temporary Island, A, 319

This Time Tomorrow, 131

Tonight At 8:30, 287

Topaze, 198

To Tell You The Truth, 351

Tragedian In Spite of Himself, 252

Trial By Fire, 167

Trial Honeymoon, 127

Under The Counter, 75
Volpone, 217

Wedding, The, 252
Where Stars Walk, 295
Winslow Boy, The, 121

You Never Can Tell, 322

Index of Authors and
Composers

Ackland, Rodney, 190
Arrieu, Claude, 119
Auerbach, Arnold, 361

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 77
Bell, Mary Hayley, 81
Berg, Gertrude, 306
Berghof , Herbert, 37
Berton, Eugene, 24
Blitzstein, Marc, 195
Bodeen, De Witt, 220
Boucicault, Dion, 37
Brecht, Bertolt, 177
Bridgewater, Leslie, 13
Brown, Forman, 67

Cahn, Sammy, 95
Carlo, Monte, 24
Carroll, Walter, 255
Caspary, Vera, 34 .
Chekhov, Anton, 252
Clements, Colin, 227
Cobb, Elisabeth, 235
Congreve, William, 13
Conkle, E. P., 341
Coward, Noel, 287

Dietz, Howard, 361
Dostoievski, Feodor, 190
Drake, Ervin, 6
Druten, van, John, 116
Dunne, George H., 167

Eisler, Hanns, 177
Engel, Lehmann, 77

Ervine, St. John, 141
Estry, Joseph L., 267
Euripides, 104

Fields, Joseph, 43
Foote, Horton, 341
Fords, John, 18
Franken, Rose, 315

Gardner, Dorothy, 146
Gilbert, W. $., 207
Goetz, Augustus, 55
Goetz, Ruth, 55
Goff, Ivan, 10
Goldbaum, Peter, 241
Goodman, Randolph, 255
Gorki, Maxim, 255
Green, Jr., Isaac, 24

Haines, William Wister, 63
Hamilton, Patrick, 219
Hammerstein II, Oscar, ico
Harrity, Richard, 341
Hart, Moss, 361
Hartman, Grace, 185
Hartman, Paul, 185
Hartog, de, Jan, 131, 211
Heggen, Thomas, 283
Herbert, F. Hugh, 135
Hilliard, Bob, 185
Horwitt, Arnold B., 230, 361
Hutton, Michael Clayton, 223

Ibsen, Henrik, 275, 300
Irving, Washington, 37

IV

James, Henry, 55
Jeffers, Robinson, 77, 104
Johnston, Denis, 279
Jonson, Ben, 217

Ladd, Hank, 185
Lamson, Peggy, 8
Laughton, Charles, 177
Lawrence, Jerome, 246
La very, Emmet, 181
Lee, Robert E., 246
Lengsfelder, S. J., 6
Levy, Benn, 198
Lewine, Richard, 230
Littlefield, James, 18
Logan, Joshua, 283
Longstreet, Stephen, 95
Luce, Ted, 185

MacLiammoir, Micheal, 295
Macrae, Arthur, 75
Manning, Samuel L., 168
Martens, G. M., 1 19
Martin, Hugh, 246
Menotti, Gian-Carlo, 3
Miller, Patsy Ruth, 67
Molnar, Ferenc, 358
Myerberg, Michael, 77

Obey, Andre", 119

Pagnol, Marcel, 198
Paul, Louis, 354
Priestley, J. B., 113, 310
Purcell, Harold, 75

Raddock, Charles, 41
Rattigan, Terence, 121
Robbins, Jerome, 246
Roberts, Ben, 10

Index of Authors and Composers

Robinson, Lennox, 258
Rodgers, Richard, 100
Ryerson, Florence, 227

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 30, 258

Sayers, Michael, 249

Schwartz, Arthur, 361

Scott, Allan, 327

Shakespeare, William, 158, 334

Shaw, George Bernard, 84, 262, 322

Shaw, Irwin, 237

Sher, Ben, 43

Sherman, Charles, 41

Sherwin, Manning, 75

Short, Robin, 241

Sigman, Carl, 185

Singer, Andre", 37

Sklar, George, 34

Smith, Conrad S., 127

Stavis, Barrie, 188

Steininger, Franz, 67

Stewart, Donald Ogden, 59

Stringberg, August, 241

Styne, Jule, 95

Sullivan, Arthur, 207

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilych, 67
Thenstead, Adolph, 168

Viertel, Peter, 237

Ward, Theodore, 47
Welles, Halstead, 319
Wilder, Thornton, 260
Williams, Herschel, 235
Williams, Tennessee, 163
Winter, Keith, 345
Wodehouse, P. G., 358
Wolas, Eva, 258, 351

Young, Harry, 26

A NOTE ON THE TYPE USED IN THIS BOOK

The text of this book has been set on the Linotype in a type-
face called "Baskerville" The face is a facsimile reproduc-
tion of types cast from molds made for John Baskerville
(ijo6-ijj5) from his designs. The punches for the revived
Linotype Baskerville were cut under the supervision of the
English printer George W. Jones.

John Baskerville' s original face was one of the forerun-
ners of the type-style known as "modern face" to printers:
a "modern" of the period A.D. 1800.

The typographic scheme and the binding design are by
W. A. Dwiggins. The book was composed, printed, and
bound by The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Massachusetts.

136252