The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
September 16, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 455 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Fall of Eve HP HE trouble all began when Eve Hutton took unto her•*¦ self, as a confidential friend and adviser,...
...The previous season she did an excellent bit of character acting in the leading role of Tweedles...
...Here and there, when it lapses from delicate satire into broad farce, it becomes so improbable and exaggerated that, as I said, it can hardly challenge a critical frame of mind...
...a young drug clerk who decides that the home surroundings can supply all the necessary charm and proceeds to prove it after buying from a glib book agent one of those superb volumes which tell you how to do everything in the pluperfect fashion and how to acquire that "indefinable illusive something called charm...
...and a mighty good beginning it is, well cast, blithely acted and adequately staged...
...As you can easily imagine, both the theme and the plot of this play lack originality...
...The story, a girl who is determined to get away to New York where she can meet "those charming people" and "work and live" or perhaps, "live and work...
...Nor is he content to flock alone on the pinnacle of his discovery...
...Partridge Presents last season...
...The boy, Joe Pond, is probably a distant cousin of Merton of the Movies...
...From even very poor material she can make something individual and distinct...
...The whole Harper family must acquire charm...
...Unfortunately the penalty of being nearly great is that no one is satisfied unless you are great...
...Harper has trouble deciding whether she shall be more like Dido or Cleopatra, receiving her guests in an improvised chaise-longue, whereat they all think she must be sick...
...Then, she decides that her trip to New York is quite unnecessary...
...Ruth Gordon at present is nearly a fine artist...
...It is, I understand, John Kirkpatrick's first play...
...At least twice, she rescued the whole play from threatened collapse by her sheer exuberance...
...He feeds it to them in luxurious doses, straight from the six hundred and forty-two page book...
...All in all, an artificial thesis, a cumbersome exposition and situations that are far from exalted...
...Later on, Eve, believing the worst of all men, is sure she has been betrayed—which leaves some further material for the last act to unravel...
...Young and old, married and single, it flocks to the soda fountain on any and every excuse...
...Charm holds for him the same glamor that the movies held for Merton...
...Instead the character becomes Ruth Gordon...
...But Ruth Gordon is supposed to redeem all this...
...The comedy, to say the least, is not very subtle, since it depends largely on the scene where Ted's bachelor friends endow Eve with a heavy overdose of cocktails and champagne, with the innocent object of relieving her mental strain...
...She is, unfortunately, too much Ruth Gordon at all times —the mannerisms are too many and too marked, the quality of the voice is too perpetual...
...Ida May Harper simply must not leave the town...
...Father Harper absorbs it grudgingly and bewildered...
...Your fine artist—shall we say Blanche Yurka?—creates a different personality for each part...
...The joyously talkative and banal Mrs...
...So the critics all crowded eagerly to see her portray Eve Hutton—and apparently few of them were disappointed...
...Hence Eve's obsession—could Ted possibly have spent an entire night at the home of a motion picture actress making out her income tax for filing the next morning, without the certainty of evil consequences...
...and the acting is, almost without exception, excellent...
...In Mrs...
...As a matter of fact, she was at her best in Tweedles, where the gingham dresses of a down East country town and the pointed simplicity of the story helped to individualize the character...
...But if, in her next play, she fails to create something new with the materials at her disposal, it may be necessary to say, with great regret, that she is just one more good "type" actress...
...Perhaps you know an Amy somewhere...
...In fact, from the evening when Joe publicly lost his poise enough to give Ida May a kiss at the conclusion of a "charming" tango, the business of the drug store trebles and quadruples...
...The scene, a country town in the languid stretches of the South...
...She has, in fact, many tricks of voice, gait and gesture which would draw laughter regardless of the lines...
...The play is devoted to curing Eve's obsession by the devious channel of making her accidentally and innocently spend the night in the bachelor home of Ted's law partner...
...But the lines are peppered here and there with neat turns which leave you chuckling broadly...
...In fact, he takes to charm as a bird to the air, flapping his wings joyously in the ozone of an etiquette appropriate only to the defunct court of the Dual Monarchy...
...Most of us do...
...Ruth Gordon, you will recall, is that talented comedienne who ran away with the honors in Mrs...
...She is her own amusing and delightful self, but she does not give the illusion of becoming the character...
...The Book of Charm IF you are not in an over critical mood and want good solid entertainment, The Book of Charm will answer your requirements neatly...
...For superlative comedy acting in a satirical play of fair, if not distinguished, qualities, you will find the Book of Charm refreshing...
...In spite of all this effort—and for reasons not hard to guess— the charm has no seduction for Ida May until she sees it begin to work in the drug store...
...Wilson, who can talk longer about a purchase of animal crackers than any known human being, was brought to spotlight prominence by Maidel Turner...
...Possibly Ruth Gordon can do this, too...
...The real honors fall to the trustees of two minor roles...
...Partridge Presents, she made more of a personal triumph, and in the present play she is doing little more than repeat last year's work with an added touch of farce...
...And Lee Tracy's five-minute opportunity as Rudolph Klein, the irresistible book agent, would make an historic vaudeville sketch by itself...
...September 16, 1925 THE COMMONWEAL 455 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Fall of Eve HP HE trouble all began when Eve Hutton took unto her•*¦ self, as a confidential friend and adviser, one Amy Parker —Amy, who had never married, Amy, whose outward virtue frowned like Gibraltar, Amy, whose mind was a deep well of suspicion, envy and evil thoughts...
...Nothing, as you can see, is deeply sophisticated about this story...
...When she has fallen heir to deep slumber, they trundle her into the library on a couch and set the negro mammy to watch before her door for the night...
...The feminine portion of the town discovers Joe's transformation...
...Amy was convinced that Ted Hutton's lady clients (Ted is a lawyer and makes up income taxes, divorce briefs and the like) were leading him astray, and before long Amy's convictions were transferred to Eve...
...Ida May thought she was angry about that outrageous kiss until she observes its broadcast effects...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 19
