The Play

...The other points are worth some attention, as a key obvious though unjust suspicions...

...Ofily such a world in detail serves to explain the conof pure theatrical art...

...it man in her bedroom, has a perfectly proper midnight lunch is all the more flagrant because the author has no semblance of sandwiches and coffee with him, but is unable to dismiss of dramatic excuse for it, not even the flimsy one of characteri- him before she has fallen in love with him and created certain zation...

...ButLawrence's highest achievement comes in the last act, a single regretfully-she is not another Helen Hayes...

...I have never I N this new comedy by Vincent Lawrence, you have, among seen, in a "straight part," a more finished and skilfully reserved other things, a curiously accurate reflection of nearly every- piece of acting, a greater range of facial pantomime, ' nor a thing that is wrong or partly wrong with the current theatre...

...Speed the day l crete peculiarities of our perceptual experience...

...mental world, it would then follow that all things are comPADRAIC COLUM is the distinguished Irish _poet and story-teller, and the author of Wild Earth, and the Children Who Followed the Piper...

...But if well done it will be a work scribes...

...clever actress, but never quite a convincing one...

...and impact...

...his former fiancee, the said earl tries to postpone the seemingly Recently there has been a recrudescence of idealism of a inevitable revelation...

...on the other hand the development and growth of empirical The best part of this tenuous evening is the acting of Hugh psychology has turned the main tide of thought toward realism Wakefield as the distressed earl...

...an instrument through which the real character created by the author flows to the audience...

...2.00...

...Behaviorism represents the extreme of this the "business" injected by the actors is at least on a par with movement, although it is too limited in scope to form a comthe playwright's lines in creating and sustaining the mood...

...Miss Brady is a or five young ladies whom it will always be a pleasure to see...

...This BOOK S year, Mr...

...in accepting external reality and mental states, respectively, as the data of perceptual and introspective knowledge in so far On Mystery Plays as it is veridical, the author designates his theory as monistic L AST week, The Donovan Affair, the new mystery play realism in contradistinction to the pan-objectivism of other by Owen Davis, was reviewed in these columns...

...Last year, Mr...

...But ing in their tracks...

...Flavin wrote in much of this business-such a realists, such as Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, Broad, and the delectable moment, for example, as when the earl removes his American "neo-realists" who have worked out more or less shoes, planning the comfort of bedroom slippers, only to put complete philosophical theories of mind...

...In the present part, her voice lacks the subdued charm percentage of the possible New York audiences were capof the wife that Mr...

...To take tion of showing innocence at home and the subtitle of "fancithe story, first : a wife falls in love (or thinks she does) with ful" should make this a delightful story...

...treatment, nor for the crude incident of the fiancee's approach- As a personal vehicle, however, for Miss Dorothy Burgess, ing maternity, which makes the reconciliation spring from Karith proved successful...

...plete mental philosophy...

...Then you interloper, after his one well-proportioned introductory scene, have some amazingly good dialogue and a strong undercurrent went very far to break up what little illusion of reality a play of human understanding matched with a crudity and thinness of of this sort might create...

...She lets her own personality Service for Two intervene, confusing rather than perfecting the original por- T WO or three years ago, the critics and an all too small trait...

...It is one of those plays where of a monistic type...

...It is amusing-in S INCE the days of Aristotle and Plato, mental philosophy numerous spots-without being vulgar...

...The Martin Flavin...

...And that, I originally engaged to...

...Every time a younger actress shows objective circumstance rather than self-discovery...

...New have been a farce...

...even degrading...

...quite as unique as Maude Adams, though not in the least like To write a full-length act for only two characters, and through her...

...JULIA DUNCAN BUCHANAN is an expert on the teaching and theories ment of its parts in space and time, but not in its substance...

...Furthermore, the premises are not well sustained...

...Our knowledge of reality consists elemental magic of the entertainment stage...

...ATHaYN WHITE RYAN, short-story writer and poet, is the author of ception and physics reveal to us the brain only in the arrangeGolden Pheasant, a book of poems...

...474 THE COMMONWEAL September 22, 1926 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Sour Grapes the work of John Halliday as the husband...

...may develop more striking abilities with experience, or even Of course, the chief advance interest in the play lay in the with a better play, havng some serious emotional value...

...It has, however, several distinct merits...

...enough material in it for one furious act...

...some special naturalness or more obscure quality, the shout goes up: "Here is another Helen Hayes...

...ceeded her in the road company of Dancing Mothers...

...more complete conveying of under- and over-tones of feeling...

...Flavin has somersaulted into a comedy that ought to Mind and Its Place in Nature, by Durant Drake...

...strangely enough, and thanks to the more or less pragmatic nature in Freudian literature, while good sportsmanship of the movie star, with success...

...But the grimaces of Frank Conroy, as the semi-intelligent Chinese would never be guilty...

...Perhaps the authors' intento the appraisal of other and more important plays...

...Very few have been of lasting value...

...LURTON BLASSINGAME is a critic of books and events for the magazines.This theory, the author avers, "gives little added illumination...

...In order to many letters worth (as any press agent would know) many avoid either extreme, attempts at compromise were made in thousands of dollars in a breach of promise suit...

...posed of psychic stuff...

...Miss Hayes is scene devoted entirely to the conversation of husband and wife...

...Josipg LEwis FRENCH, poet and anthologist, is the author of Christ which would also be in conformity with the principle of conin Art GRACE HAZARD CONELING is associate professor of English in Smith tinuity and, moreover, explain the origin of minds in a nonCollege and the author of Wilderness Songs, and Afternoons in April...

...Thereupon husband and wife, who, if submit, is box-office innocence, and not romantic fancy...

...There is, perhaps, no other dramatic field offering to the intel- The author argues from data of experiences which are either ligent playwright so large an opportunity for re-creating the perceptual or introspective...

...But one gathers the impression that Mr...

...of music...

...But Mr...

...ARRIGO LEVASrr is an Italian man of letters, distinguished among being, nor is it merely epistemological, but the terms are metaCatholics as co-editor with Papini of I Mistici, and the author of the physical, referring to different aspects of existents known...

...For An English earl, married to an American wife, finds himself a long time animism was universally accepted in one form or in the same hotel with a movie star to whom he was formerly other until finally challenged by radical materialism, which in and unwisely engaged-unwisely in that he had written her turn was reacted against by idealistic monism...

...She is not And that, as I see it, is by no means slim praise...

...MARJORIE CONE is a short-story writer for current periodicals...

...The author identifies mental with cerebral states...

...Wakefield's Drake presents in this volume a theory of the ultimate nature inventiveness is responsible for much of the body of the farce, of mind and matter, in which he asserts that our knowledge largely because, with the exception of Miss Marion Coakley composing the physical sciences is literally true of an existing as the movie star, the other characters are so often left stand- world, and that minds have an equally objective reality...

...In other words, the typical chaos, lack of proportion, blending of opposites, "~ FANCIFUL comedy by Roy Briant and Harry Durand general air of slap-dash cheapness which characterize the ant"-meaning, a comedy in which a marriageable New York stage as a whole and explain the astonishing num- young lady who still sees elves on the roadside and is subject ber of theatrical failures...

...But this under- Arthurian fabric, or, if not, the phenomenon needs more concurrent hardly compensates for the general cynicism of the vincing explanation than that supplied in the present play...

...which is explained by the brain being made of psychic stuff KENNETH SLADE ALLING and JESSIE STORRS BUTLER are among the con- arranged in a physical pattern...

...We may therefore believe in its substantial nature as found in THE COMTESSE DR CouasoN, an English writer living in France, is the author, in French, of (~uatre Portraits de Femmes, and La Persecution introspection and say that the brain has a psychic character, des Catholiques en Angleterre...

...The play was Children of the Moon, a study last few moments, in which a note of tender sincerity breaks of mental heredity and suggestion almost Ibsenesque in form forth, are by far her best...

...Its subject matter was too limited and its handling fell far short of its idea...

...It I do not mistake the author's intentions, have really been in is only one step less gross than revealing the lovely thoughts love with each other all along, but somewhat blinded by bore- of childhood to the mordant ridicule of the mob...

...While it makes no has appeared in many different garbs, practical or poetical, attempt to be uplifting, it does not depend on suggestiveness realistic or mystical, formal and dignified, or ludicrous and nor flimsy attire nor beds nor vagrant instincts for its fun...

...a breach of every canon of respect of which a hope to equal...

...But of her tivated by the grim power of the work of a new playwright, vivacity and ironical humor there can be no question...

...Flavin had another play proBut the outstanding value of the whole performance was duced which, though still abounding in adventurous thoughts, September 22, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 47 failed to ring true to common experience...

...Some may hold secondary qualities of objects, such as Color, sound, day-I hope soon-we shall see a mystery play by a playwright taste, etc., to be merely symbolic, we are justified in our belief who can bring all the conviction of supernatural agencies in a real world composed of things having the primary qualicreated by such a play as The Dybbuk...

...But there are a great many modern Perhaps Mr...

...As the simplest assumption temporary magazine poets...

...She ing amazing skill...

...to other exaggerations of word and fancy, receives a young The utterly useless profanity needs no further comment...

...Lawrence has indicated...

...Being for theories of body-mind relations such as parallelism and peace at any price, and finding himself in the next room to epiphenomenalism...

...In one respect, in our reactions to it, and we believe this knowledge to be The Ghost Train surpasses The Donovan Affair by several veridical although we are unable to prove it so...

...You also have an The Adorable Liar alarming mixture of good and bad acting...

...CARL CRANSEN is a Scandinavian critic residing in the United States...

...While we leagues, and that is in the hinting at supernatural forces...

...Obviously, it will be ties, size, shape, position, motion, mass, etc., which science dea difficult play to write...

...dom, set about to re-create what they have so nearly destroyed...

...likewise a three-act play that has about York: The Macmillan Company...

...PerItalian version of The Golden Legend of De Voragine...

...But if you ask youranother man, finds her husband all too ready to give her a self a pointblank question, you must admit that whatever the divorce, and has her plans all completed when she discovers innocence of the characters themselves, the comedy hinges on that said other man is compelled to marry the girl he was the greater worldly knowledge of the audience...

...There is nothing in Miss Burgess's performance to inthe variety of approach to a single subject to give it enough dicate unique qualities-merely the natural lovableness of a substance to hold one's attention unflaggingly, is a task demand- fresh young ingenue, with a turn for droll mannerisms...

...I realists who hold all data of experience to possess, as such, should like to add a few words on mystery plays in general...

...Yet, awareness is not a property of ]MM RTHA GENUNG STEARNS is an occasional contributor to The Commonweal...

...There A worth-while idea for a play in so far as it shows that a may be such fanciful young ladies, but at the age of Karith little earnest effort will often recapture that bond of union Barry their imaginary romances are apt to be of sturdier which lies deeper than physical attraction...

...While the terms "physical" and "psychical" have different meanings, CONTRIBUTORS the difference is not necessarily one of substance or realm of WILLIAM L. RERNAN is a contributor to the current periodicals...

...actual existence in space outside the knower...

...on his shoes again and absently place the red slippers in the Following the general tendencies of behaviorism, Professor closet...

...She is s contributor, in English, to the leading British and American penodicals...

...You have, for example, a man in a fit of angry depression Miss Flora Sheffield also had one moment of pantomime which exclaiming "Jesus"-to the apparent delight and laughter of many actresses of far greater reputation might well study and the audience...

...plot worthy of a high-school playwright...

...psychic stuff, but depends upon its correlation and function...

...As a matter of The dialogue, within its own sophisticated intentions, is remarkably well written, natural, somewhat staccato after the fact, Miss Burgess once understudied Helen Hayes and sucfashion of intimate conversation, and well pointed...

...But re-appearance of Alice Brady after her much over-heralded per- for the present, we can only add her to the list of some four formance in Bride of the Lamb last season...