The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
August 25, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 387 THE...
...George Kelly is digging deeper every rent...
...and one Erin O'Brien-Moore matches the strength of O'Neill with a deep spirituality...
...Put it down as a fact that managers who allowed New York to rediscover Helen Hayes in the now feel it necessary to mix a little extract of imitation of revival of What Every Woman Knows...
...Blumberg pertinent if not important speculation...
...for example, a play originally titled, Came the Dawn, reThe audience seemed to have a decidedly good time...
...There seems to be a by no means full the night I saw it, but that means nothing general scramble for absurdly depressing names...
...in stage blasphemy as the climax to its second act is beyond Possibly the most conspicuous case is that of William A. Brady, clear understanding...
...But as it does not pretend to be anything more than year...
...Several of the younger playwrights are on the entertainment as My Country sets out to be...
...It is time that some organized and vociferous Brady is now reaping the profits of a gamble as astute as it protest were made in every such case of disrespect and had was surprising...
...Those allied business...
...Pola Carter as Mrs...
...Blumberg has a son, Palmieri a daughter, who have reputations still to make are anxious to expand their and Van Dorn has both a son and a daughter, making just talents in new kinds of roles...
...And now we have a new comedy, by nouncements of managers contain few items calculated to William J. Perlman, My Country, which seems eager to rouse the theatrical appetite...
...ing happily...
...The elimination of stage blasphemy will not make a ready to follow the Brad)' example and exploit the dormant dollar's difference in the managers' pockets-certainly not on talents of the victims of "type" casting...
...Frank Palmieri, without exception I have noticed a growing revolt against the across the street, also makes a goodly sum in the fruit or an present method of exploiting "type" actors and actresses...
...Yet Mr...
...Her Maggie Wiley every success in their pudding, and that someone is stupid is as far from the type to which most managers had mentally enough to think that a bit of What Price Glory will help assigned her as Fannie Brice is from Ibsen's Nora...
...It seems to stand apart from all other the- to rank high among recent years...
...This impression may be due meet the challenge of repeating history...
...But it will make a difference in the integrity In one other respect, too, the new season will hold excepof the theatre, and particularly in such an obviously popular tional interest...
...August 25, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 387 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER My Country as the Italian girl, Marianna, shows symptoms of a sincere, F OR just how many years to come playwrights will seek feeling quality which, under good direction in a serious play, success on the infallible model of Abie's Irish Rose is a might carry her quite far...
...Those who already have their enough eligibles to go around...
...Both Lee Kohlmar and Joseph 13...
...I have eigners...
...In at least one direction-a heightened neighborhood has run down-i.e., has opened its arms to for- interest in fine acting-the outlook is exhilarating...
...Van Dorn, Blumberg, theatres, merely for the sake of working seriously in plays of Palmieri, and Mulcahy, with wives, daughters, and sons cheer- real merit...
...ceived its Broadway introduction as Loose Ankles...
...Verdi as the Jewish and Italian fathers respectively, are better As a last item, watch for the new plays of Dan Totheroh, who than average character studies...
...for the preliminary anatrical phenomena...
...Seed The play is all about three families-one old-American of the Brute is another indicative title...
...brink of decisive developments in their work-changes that Of course, as you would expect, a farce comedy of this sort will make or break them as permanent factors in our theatre...
...the man or woman who has voluntarily gone to see that astounding show-and yet I know that millions have seen it...
...My Country...
...Palmieri objects to the proximity of Greeks...
...And Louise Randolph, who can do some very splendid acting, is I have heard rumors that Sidney Howard has brought back the Van Dorn mother...
...By this time there are plenty of managers taste...
...way to gaining their point by having threatened to start comMulcahy objects to all foreigners, and Van Dorn is outraged panies of their own unless the commercial managers would by the whole situation...
...An the theatres begin to ape the moronosities of the movies, one Irishman is thrown in for good measure...
...the short side...
...When Dutch, one Italian, and the other, of course, Jewish...
...an extremely fine play as the result of secluded labor abroad...
...is filled to the edge with hokum, vaudeville gags, tears at the Eugene O'Neill's work, for example, is undergoing profound appropriate places, and a slight attempt at a serious undercur- changes in viewpoint...
...Nathan Blumberg, next door, makes twenty thou- talked with quite a few people in the profession, and almost sand a year manufacturing and selling pants...
...after Processional, will probably have another chance...
...And so it goes...
...thousand a year, but trying to live up to the pure Americanism But a study of the inside of the theatrical world holds out of his Dutch ancestors who came over about 1614...
...The theatre was partly to the fad in present play titles...
...I am still looking for exercises a thankful restraint in a character that needs it...
...And the best of it is that the commercial managers have Just why an innocent concoction of this sort should indulge begun to see the practical value of fine and varied acting...
...Others have shown a distinct fully so for hot weather-and comes off with a toast in good willingness to take much smaller salaries from the so-called art chianti drunk solemnly by Messrs...
...Last week, in these days of torturing heat and erratic thunderstorms...
...The conclusion is obvious-delight- give them larger opportunities...
...Robert Van Dorn, is inclined to guard a healthy silence until the plays themselves at fifty or thereabouts, is still a clerk on a salary of three can break down the initial prejudice...
...Blumberg objects to the influx niche want to do repertory, and several of them are in a good of Italians...
...The rather more hope...
...The Season in Prospect I recently heard of a man who had seen it in four or five of TIIE so-called new season which starts about August 15, our large cities and was waiting to see it again in New York and which gets well under way by the middle of Septemas soon as his wife arrived, because, as he said, "we always ber, will have to show many surprising developments if it is see it together...
...John Howard Lawson, whose Nirvana was a sad slump it is, you can accept it as reasonably good of its own kind...
Vol. 4 • August 1926 • No. 16
