Poems
Wood, Clement & Heller, Samuel & Vinal, Harold & Matson, Mabel Cornelia & Wickham, Grace & Nicholl, Louise Townsend
20 THE COMMONWEAL May 12, 1926 THE PLAY ...
...The latter has ness is too strong for a genteel round of golf, bridge, and the devastating wit of his thirty-seven years, but the emo- platonic interludes with the nice girl Amanda has picked out tional and consequently theatrical development of a clever and for him, to smother it...
...GRACE WICKHAM...
...Perpetual poise of arm and javelin: They are as ashes in a catacomb, Motors catapulting into a valley...
...I long for coral, gold, His mother took him in her arms Jewels of amber, jade...
...Repeatedly he said...
...way to represent the striking back at life of a mind old enough R. DANA SKINNER...
...These, where your white hands fold, "Oh, the spaces and shadows...
...We saw in that same place She wouldn't mind so much, she told me once, Our faces undistorted...
...Oh, even here The house is simply stacked with flowers, Will there be stillness spread They are everywhere- And clarity which cures...
...They can his responsibilities be discharged, deserves that abused are merely type patterns in whom we see as much individuality epithet, a "scream...
...So is the house brought low, the fattened soul A pyramid frozen toward its star: Is taken captive at the sumptuous feast, Whirr of metallic birds lifting and roaring...
...Miss Shoe, the man- so perfectly as Mr...
...The great house toppled, wall and roof and dome...
...He should be kept at home...
...It would think it is...
...Merely to listen to give her...
...HAROLD VINAL...
...There was a pond where images were thwarted Another spring he wouldn't be so rushed, But when we came again He always said...
...Something which stirred was quieted...
...to the eighteenth hole, he adopts a charming little girl of All this may seem unnecessarily severe in view of the many five, and installs her surreptitiously in his celibate apartments...
...You call me, and I go, Burdened with sleep...
...boarding house...
...His proWe have in this country, in George Kelly, an observer every tection he owes to a masterly elder sister, who saves him bit as astute, a technician of considerably greater range, and the trouble of making up his mind on any conceivable evena human philosopher of far greater understanding...
...Sick and terrified...
...Well, perhaps a much greater constructive force by helping in this way to I do know why, after all...
...Spilt is the wine and broken is the bread...
...She leaned against the barred gate I know, as dreamers know, "Why, oh, God," she cried, The night is deep...
...But not in the sense of being in- stern sense of duty has convinced him that in no other way dividuals through whom we catch universal elements...
...The old-fashioned publisher used to do JUST why the closing production of the Theatre Guild as much for promising writers, and, no doubt, individual manseason should make me think of my friend's lament that agers are doing this aft the time...
...The quality of human mercy as life carpets, window curtains, and spring cleaning have little well as the comedy gruel at Mrs...
...The the Theatre Guild most needs is some one person delegated to faculty of honest laughter must be dormant if audiences do the task (and abundantly equal to it) of talking with, per- not pack the Longacre Theatre for weeks to come...
...And his crime, Laura Pasquale, is all the moronic parasites of the perfunctory wooing of the exuberant sewing-maid when a globe rolled into one...
...It has moments of hilariously rich entertainment...
...It is even whispered that the redoubtable for a man (or woman) to feel the paternal (or maternal) Bernard Shaw thinks well of Munro, and so forth...
...Lunt and Miss Fontanne can contrive-and, of course, no less finished of the woman most of us know, in whose that is no mean quantity...
...But I am sure that if you subtract from the To persuade the overbearing Amanda to consent to the present production the brisk direction of Philip Moeller and scheme, an elaborate web of intrigue and mystification becomes the impeccable acting of Jean Cadell, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn necessary, packing three acts with a series of uproarious situaFontanne, you would find the play dull, sophomoric, and fit tions which never once flag or creak...
...I rather think that it has certain important qualifications...
...for keen observation, but too young to have formed any important conclusions---certainly too young to have passed beyond Pomeroy's Past the love of types to the mellowed understanding of individuals...
...Jyhen the Master Came And when the master of the house came home, Progress A servant met him and the servant said Tall columns like grey snow against the green: Master, my master, while the feast was spread, A locomotive screaming over a crossing...
...Light-hearted men, saddened, dying, dead...
...If she had flowers...
...suading, cajoling, and inspiring existing American playwrights H. L. S. May 12, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 21 POEM S 2'o &heherazade Ballad Your eyes, two cups of fire, That horse is much too big for him...
...The characters No one can act what is called a "perfect little gentleman" are merely sharply differentiated types...
...sadden me considerably to think that Munro is really regarded Pomeroy Chilton is a very exemplary, quite wealthy, and in England as one of the empire's most promising playwrights...
...usual event has brought him much attention from the critics Does nature, in her benign scheme for the perpetuation of the and aroused considerable public curiosity, generously whetted race, occasionally, as it were, miss a process...
...The flame of my desire The beast goes on for miles and miles Lifts at your shrine...
...But until instinct very strongly, with a complete absence of the mating the opinion of said Shaw appears in quotation marks, I like to urge which is its customary and traditional prelude...
...Jle Never Found the Time `Restoration He never found the time to spare Does water always clear...
...Yearn into mine...
...moments of good fun furnished by the episodes at Mrs...
...But Pomeroy's philoprogenitivenever to the astonishing degree of Munro...
...chiefly for the efforts of amateur theatricals...
...The owl, the snaky locks, in brooding stone: The armored hall where your soul banqueted, A steam-derrick in agonized creaking and hissing...
...create its own dramatic material than by continuing forever to This comedy by C. K. Munro (whose real name, I believe, is import such ready-made froth as Mrs...
...The connection is fairly obvious...
...Miss Laura Hope Crews gives a study as Mr...
...Yet, it plays blossoming forth on the same night...
...The cup of crystal and the ancient tome...
...Against your dark brocade...
...Beam's...
...A gold vase silence is buried in: Sirens out of the fog bellowing shrilly...
...Beam's is pretty well by little become life's foreground...
...This rather un- does, in its own hilarious fashion, present us with a problem...
...Merely to watch him move across the stage, ladies of the world, but she achieves only such individuality as bearing his exiguous inches modestly but manfully, is a joy Miss Cadell's physical presence and perfected stage business for those who still relish finished study...
...it is praise enough to say that they have caught the infection I have a feeling, mounting slowly to a conviction, that what of Miss Kummer's verve and give it worthy support...
...over-protected young man in a "restricted" suburb...
...Is it possible by adroit publicity...
...MABEL CORNELIA MATSON...
...Palm-trees, languorous, dense, One night they galloped fiercely in Murmur, hour after hour- From a half day's ride, I long for frankincense, The boy fell shaken to the ground, Pomegranate, lotus-flower...
...And comes back wet with foam...
...I, yours...
...Kelly also tuality, and whose general oversight of his life ranges from showed in Craig's Wife a lack of mature insight, a tendency what socks he shall wear to what girl he shall, in some into follow the formula "see the surface and you see all," but definite future, marry...
...And carried him to bed...
...Its time to an authentic account of the Guild's policy in coaching, characterization is merciless and caustic...
...CLEMENT WOOD...
...Of the rest of the cast strained...
...It seems in a curious coaxing or coercing American playwrights...
...Pegasus to ride...
...Did you give my only son SAMUEL HELLER...
...To make her flower bed...
...And she lies smiling there, all by herself, Will you look down and see my face, And does not care...
...And dust has fallen on the plume and scroll ; Endless dull sand, where footprints never were: The sign of the apocalyptic beast Square-windowed towers heavenward endlessly sneering Is written on the fountain and the bowl- Light-hearted men, saddened, dying, dead: Belshazzar's signet scribbled in the East...
...Dermott, the thief, suspected by Miss Shoe of his little hems and haws as one point after another in his being a notorious Parisian "bluebeard," becomes all the un- tenuous fabric of invention goes home to his sister's virgin scrupulous rascals of all time, and his traveling companion in but, on the whole, tender heart, is a refreshment...
...From an orphanage that lies handy bitter high school student...
...LOUISE TOWNSEND NICHOLL...
...Ernest Truex, and in Pomeroy's Past he agerial old maid "with cosmopolitan blood in her veins" is, has a part that brings out unsuspected depths of likable if you want, a picture of all the managerial and busybody fatuousness...
...With him afield all day, I guess And bending then She passed some lonesome hours...
...Beam's mercial managers...
...20 THE COMMONWEAL May 12, 1926 THE PLAY with' a view to bringing forth from them finer material than any they are likely to furnish of their own initiative to comAt Mrs...
...If I am doing MacMullan) has about as much theatrical magic as an astute the Guild an injustice in thinking that it is neglecting an comic strip in an evening paper, and rather less broad human- opportunity at its doorstep, I shall gladly yield space at any ity...
...But the Guild could become magic has flown from the modern theatre...
...Nothing of Munro's has been seen on the American stage IT would be a gross misnomer to call Miss Clare Kummer's until this last week, and then, of a sudden, we find two of his extravaganza, Pomeroy's Past, a problem play...
...Beam's Pomeroy at last has a little angel in his home...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 1
