The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
July 14, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 269 THE...
...plays should be written for him...
...The modest but strong performances of Palm Beach Girl and changed to Ziegfeld's Revue of 1926 Dwight Frye would about complete the list of those who have is an attempt to clothe, amid large publicity, what other review shown the plastic qualities of genuine acting, although I share shops have been busily de-clothing for the last three years...
...One hopes sonality, or novelty of execution...
...a splendid versatility with a growing power of sharp characterization and a fine balance between the tragic and the comic Ziegfeld's Revue of 1926 sense...
...In current interest, the quality of acting in the last season In a somewhat different category, we have those very marked holds first place-not because it has great permanent value, personalities of Helen Gahagan, Katherine Cornell, Ethel but because it bears more directly on things we may expect in Barrymore, Ann Harding, Blanche Yurka, and Lynn Fonthe months immediately to come...
...She still needs totally unexpected successes have emerged from an astonish- the test of a fine part in a great play...
...They flow along pleasantly enough, but with the and an astonishing emotional power...
...Helen to the future in its approval and rejection of many curious Chandler, whose Hedvig in The Wild Duck made every offerings...
...tain qualities of sincerity and insight, plus personal charm, Several acting reputations have been firmly established...
...Miss has given us that brings new vitality to the stage...
...Claiborne Foster has brought cerheld a singular importance from many and varied angles...
...Although she is best known as a comeThe Monkey Talks...
...In fact his quality was more that of the Shake- and reserve power...
...Sothern Barrymore has become once more the slender and entrancing appeared in modern clothes in Brieux's Accused, but gave us vision of other days, and acts always with exquisite refinement nothing new...
...Hayes...
...every drama lover now knows is that Helen Hayes can sink Of the individual numbers in the revue, not much need herself into a complete characterization with unfaltering art be said...
...And public taste has given hostages The Great God Brown showed a broad range...
...who should not be exposed to sudden currents of cool air, just The development in the art of several of our actresses has as there are one or two before-the-curtain songs which ring been more encouraging...
...Miss Skinner, on the other hand, achieved real greatness as Falstaff, Yurka is more nearly at the summit of her powers and should and made one long for many more opportunities to see his inwardly complete and outwardly polished work...
...Then came the a lucrative summer show can be put on without resorting to revival of Barrie's What Every Woman Knows, and what general nudity and the pervasive atmosphere of an orgy...
...It has been a season of deep undercurrents, good critic blink his eyes, has unfortunately started down the long and bad, to which no one with a real understanding of the grade of monotony...
...Miss Cornell is an interesting and spearean actor taken unawares...
...Dudley MR...
...For several years she has been the most conspicuous On the other hand, by all means let us give the glorifier victim of type casting-always as the aggressive though slightly of the American girl his due...
...In this sextette we find the great maturity of art, the mitting, I shall take up certain plays as they loom in retrospect...
...At the top of the list comes Helen the usual changes on vulgarity...
...Otis devotion to the theatre and an intensity of careful work that give her, perhaps, the greatest possibilities of all...
...Several to that rather misdirected comedy, The Patsy...
...In a later issue, space per- tanne...
...Leona Hogarth in ingly varied list of plays...
...widest range unhampered by physical limitations, and, on But for the moment, let us consider the actor and what he the whole, the most complete expression of the theatre...
...Ruth Gordon is still the premiere comeplace of the theatre in modern life could remain indifferent...
...Miss Fontanne is expanding her range amazingly under the stimulus of the Merivale as a virile, romantic, and amusing Hotspur, balanced against pleasing but mediocre performances in Antonia and Theatre Guild plan...
...Unfortunately, his diction has not improved...
...ZIEGFELD has rung a gong-rung it in no unDigges remains our finest artist for character parts with an certain fashion, as is his wont...
...the feeling that both William Harrigan and Robert Keith in The result is a trifle ambiguous, even if the proclaimed inThe Great God Brown have shown a power approaching tention is not...
...There are still a few young ladies in the show fine art...
...heroic Hamlet lacking slightly in lustre, his usual superb Miss Gahagan adds to splendid physical equipment an obvious Cyrano, and little else to enhance his reputation...
...June Walker com- exception of those enlivened by the inimitable Ray Dooley, pleted the promise of Processional with an amazingly poetic they lack something of essential glamour either in music, perrendering of the slavey in The Glass Slipper...
...Alfred Lunt, under his Of Ann Harding this can be said in all fairness...
...Glenn Hunter in Young with timorous hand in the general clang of New York is Woodley showed an ever-increasing ability to make himself worse than ringing no gong at all, and who should know interesting and appealing, but he still depends more on his own this better than the man who first brought the Broadway personality than on the art of acting in the interpretive sense...
...within a season or two hold just about the leading position on Among the younger men, onee recalls most easily Philip our stage, both in comedy and tragedy...
...He has demonstrated to the poignant American flapper...
...she has everyrepertory contract with the Theatre Guild, has demonstrated thing before her if she will simplify her work...
...For to ring a gong added touch of genius as a director...
...They should be watched carefully...
...review to something approaching stupendous glamourl At all John Barrymore still leaves us waiting for something to match events, the Palm Beach entertainment originally billed as The against his Hamlet...
...Mary Ellis, of Rose-Marie By R. DANA SKINNER reputation, suddenly emerged as a youthful tragedienne of Plays of a Season power and spiritual beauty in The Dybbuk, and followed this B EFORE distance lends too great an enchantment, it is with a charming though less distinctive performance in The time to begin an appraisal of a vanishing season that has Romantic Young Lady...
...dienne "in type," but needs a chance at more varied roles...
...July 14, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 269 THE PLAY that her venture into Gentlemen Prefer Blondes will be as brief as it is sure to be expert...
...Hampden clung to cos- glamorous personality first, and an actress second...
...A brief excursion into Shaw's complete conviction of everyone who has seen the revue that Cleopatra did not dispel the atmosphere...
...Merivale has reached the stage where dienne, she amply demonstrated her tragic force in Goat Song...
...If she tume and likewise to mannerisms, with a most satisfying and does not yield to the menace of popularity, all will be well...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 10
