The Play

...Golden what there is of it-concerns a girl who pretends to be the has been pretty aggressive in his claims of cleanliness, the critics traveling wife of a Frenchman (and, of course, is not) in order have had a fine time patting him on the head like an infant to help him cover up an affair with another man's wife and at bay...

...tragedy...

...September 29, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 495 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER 2 Girls Wanted Naughty Riquette JOHN GOLDEN has the habit and the reputation of pro- rlITZI HAJOS, who for several years has abandoned her ducing "clean" plays...

...GEORGE O'NEIL...

...others like a fresh cream cheese...

...His books include Drums of Defeat, Carven From the Laurel Trees, A Tankard of Ale, and The Divine Adventure...

...Some heads...

...tunate in her selection of an opening play for this sea, son...

...essays, Points of View, Varia, In Our Convent Days, and Americans and Others...

...A review of The Letters of Louise Just Life Imogen Guiney is printed elsewhere in this issue of The M ISS MARJORIE RAMBEAU has not been very for- Commonweal.-The Editors...

...It has in it the poor orphan girl from the country, this or skill in construction to demand much comment...

...The stones...

...Her works include The White Sail, Here where these long, slow lights of spring are falling Patrius, A Roadside Harp, The Martyr's Idyl, and Happy Endings...

...lines an uneasy weightiness...

...REVEREND T. LAWRASON RIGGS is the chaplain of the Catholic Club at Lonely and shy and lovely with no name...

...Is the on our stage today, not even excepting Ruth Gordon...

...Miss lack of proportion her own...

...Being Naughty Riquette is by Oscar Straus, and the book and lyrics dedicated to the task of being personally amusing at all costs, by Harry B. Smith...

...great work, possibly in parts of quite a different character from 496 THE COMMONWEAL September z9, 1926 any she has been given in recent years...

...But Together on a hill...

...There is, in the offing, a frustrated O happy soil ! 0 terror beyond wail, and honest man who has silently loved Madame Bernice If never sheaf the Sowing should requite, Chase for long years and who, we are given to understand And time between were busied but to blight in the last two minutes, will take the place of her husband Good will, which only can make God avail when divorce arrangements have been completed...

...Perhaps in a play of such ancient vintthese languid first-nighters will seize upon any weapon at age, the book is hardly worth mentioning...

...The point that Pigs seems to have been something more than clean...

...She needs, for her best expression, a far stormier part than the tortured Bernice Chase...

...It never occurs splendid and justified assurance...

...people like only an animated and ancient cheese with their There are four bright spots in this otherwise dull entercoffee and crackers...

...FuLTON J. SHEEN is the only American fellow of the University of Louvain...

...DAVID MORTON...

...And then, in rare and have me report the remark of a lady in the row just behind interesting flashes, she shows us moments of real emotional me...

...In soft and dreamy splendors over the ground, DAVID MORTON is associated with the English department of Amherst And birds along the darkening wood are calling, College, and the author of The Sonnet...

...She is unique and delightful as she is, a sort of Chap- have a strong feeling that Miss Moore is capable of really linesque figure, with the fine artistry of intelligent restraint...

...WILLIAM EVERETT CRAM is a New Hampshire farmer and writer on natural history...

...divorce were not made the all-too-easy solution, one might even detect a fairly sound moral in this glimpse of domestic LouISE IMOGEN GuINEY (1861-1920...

...Sylvan Lee and Jane Moore present a black-face dance Miss Unger's little comedy, inhabited by Nydia Westman, which is, in its way, a small masterpiece...

...Yale University...

...On the other hand, a first-class director, with authority to fit her into a high comedy am Semen est Tlerbum Dei part of some distinction and range of feeling, might enable her (This sonnet, hitherto unpublished, was discovered by Miss to make a gradual transition into a richer field...

...SIR BERTRAM C. A. WINDLE is professor of anthropology at Saint Find here again a hushed and lonely way Michael's College, Toronto, and the author of A Century of Scientific Thought, The Church and Science, and The Romans in Britain...

...LouISE IMOGEN GUINEY was a distinguished American poet who died at Oxford, England, in 1920...

...One might just as well lament the and an authentic comedian in the bargain-an excellent type, fact that Fanny Brice is not John Barrymore-instead of re- one would say, for Gilbert and Sullivan revivals...

...We hear a neigh, she falls too easily into a singing monotony which gives her The thud of hooves and shouting, every day...

...Yes, it it does do one thing-it raises the acute problem of what we parades these characters without shame, and does so, curiously are going to do with that amazing comedienne, Florence Moore...

...EDWIN CLARK is a contributor of literary criticism to current pub- Something comes back that was not here before, lications...

...His books include Little Beasts of Field and Wood, Visitation and American Animals...

...And fields as sad, as beautiful, as they...

...The music of biased criticism from the gentlemen of the daily press...

...And thinking of the horse, I wonder If that boy stables him with crystal bars CONTRIBUTORS And pats him over to a pail of stars...

...But I care...

...Is it due to an irrepressible energy Westman can make an audience laugh with a monosyllable or which no amount of direction or expert coaching could mold want to cry with a pained eyebrow...

...that one feels like clamoring for an author and a play to do And now a closing word about Nydia Westman...

...enough, without reproach except for one incident at the close Miss Moore's work-hard, driving work-in her part as of scene one of act three, where the pseudo-melodrama becomes a stenographer, in love with her lawyer boss, who turns Portia incredible...

...AGNES REPPLIER is well known in American letters for her volumes of Ghostwise returns for this too ghostly fame...

...Yes-it is Till souls be corn and vintage of His feast, that kind of a play...

...In a curtain speech, little Miss bewildered by various critical statements to the effect that Nydia Westman assured us that "Pigs is clean," and that, one the play is quite pure and innocent...

...Up the long hill and over with a flash...

...One they understand just what the public wants might be glad to feels a veritable outpouring of energy...

...Stanley Lupino, a cousin to me to wonder what it might have been if it had been an of Lupino Lane, proves to be almost as acrobatic as his cousin entirely different play...

...It has become the strange agreed, was that ! But in looking backward through the per- view of present-day critics that a play only borders on inspective of a season decorated by Shanghai gestures, dusky decency when it puts grossly sensual scenes on the stage or Harlem belles and other microscopic examinations of sewerage, treats seriously of sin and its consequences...

...And it succeeds in making many of the oldest and most familiar situations in the theatre She Couldn't Say No amusing if not convincing, enjoyable if by no means exhilarat- THIS farce by B. M. Kaye is hardly of the proportions ing...

...Boyd As if the meadow were a burning floor Marshall played the thankless part of the faithful friend with At sundown, running for the golden door manliness and force, and Clyde Fillmore as Gordon Chase That closes the wide evening wall, they dash was all that the character demanded in morose shiftiness...

...ment of sin, the point that a play of either punishment or reThe same thing can be said of the new Golden pro- demption may be wholly moral seems miles above the critical duction, 2 Girls Wanted, written by Gladys Unger...

...to give him a lesson, is unbelievably good and bad...

...But perfect and upright young business man as hero...

...Just Life is, in most respects, as aimless as its title, the Springtide of spirits, at the altar rail: story of an ex-opera singer who works hard to keep her home A mystic Sowing, in the morning light: together without knowing exactly how to do it, and a husband A gentleness of love that yet can smite whose dishonesty of mind as well as action puts him beyond As on the granary floor the threshing-flail...

...With wind behind them, toward an arc of sun, Not many actresses have as pleasing a voice as Miss Rambeau...

...But the energy is often misplaced, out of all relation "This is going to be good-there are six scenes...

...And then joicing in the fact that both are artists...

...And the emotional flashes are so fine and sincere got it...

...As to the serious treatentertainment...

...Perhaps she has a greater into a finished performance...

...GEORGE O'NEIL is a contributor of poetry to current magazines...

...The habit is commendable, but last name entirely, has at last arrived back in New York the reputation rather harmful when it comes to obtaining un- in a musical comedy of the old, old school...

...Probably the most interesting acting was that of Ethel Wilson When they are gone the dark seeps quickly under as an attractive maiden aunt...

...from a cynic...

...PADRAIC COLUM, Irish poet and story-teller, is the author of Wild Some joy I had, some heartbreak that I wore, Earth, The Children Who Followed the Piper, and other books...

...As He was aye of ours, how grave and slow John Bowie is the author of Just Life, and one gathers that Like any weary husbandman, a Priest in spite of the essential bitterness of the play, he is still far Fills the long furrow, treading to and fro...

...pretends to be-just what it is...

...Which, or perspective to the other players or the movement of the translated, means that she knew what she wanted-and she play itself...

...MURIEL KENT is an English author, and a contributor of articles, reviews, and poems to American and English magazines...

...This her justice, for any setting, in fact, rather than cheaply condiminutive person, with the funny little catch in her voice structed farce...

...But the construction of the play is so crude, its preachments so obvious and its comedy so forced that, as it ,'table Boy stands, it has no real value other than the chance it gives Miss Rambeau for some excellent scenes...

...It seems a light and comic treatment of irregularities is quite as bad, to have been, within its own frank limitations, a good evening's if not far more insidious, has been lost...

...THEODORE MAYNARD is an English poet and author now residing in Now all the sadness that my heart has known, the United States...

...There is While I am speaking of scenes, those who believe that not a comic line or situation that she fails to wring dry...

...in order to obtain money for her sick brother, one is slightly Last year it was Pigs...

...Grace Guiney, the literary executrix of Louise Imogen Guiney, at Oxford, England...

...It has time with a sister to boot, the wicked Wall Street hard man some pretty raw lines scattered here and there, a few-very (with a soft heart) the sneering villain, the sophisticated few-genuinely amusing situations, and it is presented, for debutante just back from Europe with "fawncy" ideas, and the the most part, with a cast that takes itself languidly...

...MARGARET B. DOWNING is a contributor to the magazines on Catholic and historical subjects...

...She I go to see a cream cheese play, I don't expect it to have a still goes about her business of laughter and tears with a suspicious tang...

...If so, there is nothing we can range than her recent plays permit...

...Mitzi has lost none of her quaint charm...

...If Vows that pure Seed some harvest, ere the snow...

...I can well imagine that the reverse of the comic shield might show an emotional POEM S actress of sustained power and insight...

...DR...

...and her everlasting solemnity, is one of the drollest heroines What, then, is one to do with Florence Moore...

...After looking at her program, she said to her companion, force...

...But one doesn't much do but resign ourselves to constant disappointment...

...But as the plothand to poke fun at a play or its producer, and as Mr...

...He is the author of God and Intelligence...

...Through skies of dreamy splendor like their own, GEORGE D. MEADOWS is an English reviewer at present living in the United States...

...the pale of all sympathy...

...There are moments when one feels an under- And there my clod of earth, the last, the least, current of better feeling than the surface details indicate...

...When tainment...

...And all the briefest joy that could not stayJOHN M. KENNY, JR., is a contributor of book reviews to American The sighs and laughter that my breath had sown, magazines...

...ERNEST BRENNECKE, JR., is a New York critic, and the author of a Less like a sound than like a hush of soundbiography of Thomas Hardy...

...A stallion and a boy beside him run She can, when occasion presents, do a great deal with it...

...I like it for just what it is...