The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
March 10, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 497 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Wisdom Tooth SINCE the advent of O'NeuTs Great God Brown, the fashion threatens to prevail among Broadway writers...
...Connelly holds to this course, his next play should be a real achievement...
...But it is one thing to be a good monkey beyond the footlights, and quite another to suppose that people could stroke this man's false wig, come within a few inches of his grease paint, see him every day for weeks on end in the circus dressing rooms, and still think him plain monkey...
...It is as if he had consciously "written down" to an audiences—thereby withholding that final touch of sincerity which might have lifted the play into something extraordinarily fine...
...One feels it was too carefully mapped out—as if Mr...
...They incite wonder rather than syllogisms...
...Miss Barclay fails, largely through her diction, in conveying an ethereal mood...
...The importance to you and me, as playgoers, of a sincere play is that ten times out of ten it is a far better play than those which cover up deeper feelings by smartness or evasion...
...At first the attitude succeeds...
...Even Barnum could not expect that...
...My quarrel with present French drama is not with the underlying French feeling, but with the brittle mask they have thrown over it, and the willingness of their writers to kill the beauty of their own emotions by facile poses and insincerities...
...He has found his own soul again...
...Therefore, the audience at the Heckscher Theatre, reading the program of the Talbot Productions' Bunk of 1926 before the opening chorus, is stimulated with curiosity and expectancy by the repetition of the name of Gene Lockhart...
...At this point the reality of the play gives way to the fantasy of a day-dream before the fireplace in his boarding house...
...The minor parts and characterizations are all well handled with the exception of Lalita, the dream girl...
...The real feeling of the French for human relations is very deep and fine...
...But either in the original writing, or perhaps in the actual staging, or both, it has elements of crudity which detract from the sheer enjoyment it ought to bring...
...Thus that particular group of critics and playwrights, whose intellectual rendezvous is the supper room of a Fortyrfourth Street hotel, will tell you that Marc Connelly —one of their club—has removed his mask in The Wisdom Tooth, and told a sensitive and frank tale of what New York can do to undermine the courage and mental independence of men...
...This shock starts him on his search...
...But its entire plot depends on your being willing to think that an animal trainer could for several years successfully fool all of his close associates in the circus by dressing up a stunted man as a monkey and having him utter sounds that closely approach words...
...But slowly the "yes" man finds that he has paid his way at the price of respect...
...The French writers, with a few exceptions, have so ossified their art that they rely upon the audiences to accept almost any impossible situation as a "stage convention...
...People find it soothingly pleasant to be agreed with...
...They are either brittle bits of sophistication, or plays with interesting themes that dry up in the middle...
...They have a local quality, as if one could say she were born in such and such a town...
...His soul is not his own...
...Of course, if you jump this mental hazard—for the fun of it, let's say—the rest of the play runs pretty smoothly...
...Lockhart has a gift for humorous surprise, and the laughter it evokes is spontaneous and unforced...
...There are, to be sure, some numbers that are not as amusing as others—but this is in the nature of all reviews...
...Connelly has told this story through the plot of a country boy who comes to New York and allows himself to become a cog in the white collar machine...
...She should study for greater voice range...
...It is a hopeful sign when the erstwhile sophisticates of New York begin to write plays of this kind...
...The result is that even with very skilful adaptation, most French plays given in New York lack vitality and human interest...
...There is gaiety and charm and real humor in The Bunk of 1926—and there is Miss Ruth Tester who sings A Modest Little Thing, out-Lawrencing Gertrude Lawrence in that actress's own brand of naivesophisticated ballad...
...Strengthened by his examination of conscience (for it is nothing less than that good old-fashioned method under another name) he telephones his boss to protest against an injustice to a fellow employee...
...It does show a great deal of understanding, and its fantastic story, although crudely and at times too obviously presented, reveals a lot of the inner struggle of those who try to meet life by being weak reflections of the people around them...
...It is this element of wonder and mystery which Mr...
...The Monkey Talks THIS play was written for the French stage, which naturally accounts for the mechanical rigidity of its plot and the artificiality of its construction...
...No man can really hide behind a typewriter or a pen...
...Thomas Mitchell as Bemis, the troubled hero of this fantasy, has caught the underlying spirit with fine understanding, and Mary Philips makes of the girl much more than a playing part by giving tenderness to the moment of apparent cruelty...
...He has bartered it for a safe job...
...He may be easy to get on with, but no one cares for the opinions he expresses because they are not his own...
...She is a first-rate little actress—never better than in Lazybones of last season—with only one handicap, a voice and diction that remain the same in all her parts...
...From this stage he then comes to see that he has lost self-respect as well...
...At last even the girl he loves, who has liked him for the fine qualities.she senses underneath, loses her respect for him and tells him so...
...One feels, however, a certain inadequacy and amateur quality in the stage-management of The Bunk of 1926—lights go off and on at the wrong time, curtains drop too soon or too late—flaws that no doubt will be remedied before the production is much older...
...The boss promptly fires him—but to his amazement, he finds that he doesn't care...
...That is a crucial test, which only an actress of perfect feeling could meet...
...And, of course, he finds with it the renewed respect and love of the girl whose apparent cruelty has really proved a saving kindness...
...Leonardo da Vinci viewed as a painter, a musician, and an inventor of an aeroplane (what though it did crash on its trial flight...
...In addition to this, a considerable amount of the acting and singing has fallen to Mr...
...He tries to find out what he really is, and the search is a painful process...
...Even an insincere play reveals a great deal about its author—the fact, for example, that he does wear a mask, or assumes an artificial and false attitude toward life...
...is far more fascinating than when viewed merely as an artist...
...Reality comes back...
...The chief merit of the present production, beyond the extraordinary impersonation of Lerner, is the chance it gives to see Philip Merivale again in a part that does offer some good moments in restrained emotion, and little Martha-Bryan Allen...
...We don't need the words of modern scientists to tell us that we hate our own faults in another, and that when we appear to be attacking something with fanatic zeal, we are probably attacking a tendency in ourselves...
...Connelly set out too deliberately to prove a thesis in psychology, with the result that the dream characters move like obedient puppets rather than with the divine inconsequence of a real day-dream...
...The Bunk of 1926 * I * HERE is always an undeniably engaging quality in verX satility...
...To him are attributed the sketches and lyrics (in collaboration with Percy Waxman) the music (with the exception of one song by Deems Taylor and two by Robert Armbruster) and the staging and producing...
...Connelly's play lacks...
...It makes no attempt to be sophisticated...
...He imagines himself facing his boss with this lost courage of youth—and discovers what it means to win respect from others...
...The Wisdom Tooth has a great deal of this simple strength...
...The day-dream proceeds with rather heavyfooted logic...
...If his feelings tell him that something is wrong, he can be made to say it is right by anyone with a stronger personality than his own...
...But as a simple theatre-goer, what you most appreciate is the added strength in the play itself...
...Lockhart's share—and of him it can be said that he has done all these things well...
...If the author is a personal friend of yours, you may be glad to see his stronger side emerging...
...But when they discover the change in him, they, too, leave him...
...This does not seem to me of particular importance...
...Miss Tester from across the footlights looks as though she ought still to be having supper in the nursery—but she has undoubted talent and appeal...
...He calls on his dead grandparents to tell everyone what a fine fellow he really is...
...I say divine because the real mysteries of life do not fully and obviously reveal themselves...
...The whole idea would be utterly preposterous if it were not for the fact that Jacques Lerner does succeed so amazingly well in imitating a monkey that for a moment you are almost ready to say "yes, it could happen...
...It has comparatively few relics of French sophistication, and touches here and there springs of considerable beauty, particularly in the mutual devotion and spirit of self-sacrifice between the ex-prince turned animal showman, and the deformed man whom he has befriended and taught to laugh again...
...He has ceased being a "yes" man...
...The Monkey Talks comes nearer to a human play than many...
...What first appears to be inconsequent and disordered unfolds its inner plan very slowly...
...March 10, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 497 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Wisdom Tooth SINCE the advent of O'NeuTs Great God Brown, the fashion threatens to prevail among Broadway writers of describing every effort at fantastic playwrighting as a stripping off of masks...
...The border line between fantasy and reality is too abrupt...
...This one is a half successful but very worth-while experiment...
...If Mr...
...Then he lives over his youth— circus days—days when he was willing to fight for his beliefs, even when that meant belief in fairies...
...He loses the power to think for himself...
...This is a clean, and in many ways, a brave little story, told with much poetry and tenderness...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 18
