The Play

...It is, in brief, photoplay demi-mondaines associated with the political leading men are drama...

...The present play is very crude in spots...

...But his vocal Macbeth...

...And a brilliant director can do the same offering Franz Werfel's massive play based on the tragic and with the weaker portions of a play...

...It could have been told at any time during the cals...

...Alfred Lunt has been given the role of Maximilian, the United States was engaged in civil war...

...Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Comof this particular situation, but I find the following pany...

...plan its program of plays long in advance and avoid the slap- The Theatre Guild's settings for this series of episodes are dash methods of many strictly commercial producers...

...cast for the role of the heavy villain in the Gold Corner plot, When it is not depicting Clyde's seduction of Roberta Alden Jay Gould is not whitewashed ; and I feel that the additional with a crass reality, it grows obstetrical in the doctor's office vice of hypocrisy makes him the more guilty of the two...

...The and lurid in the court-room scene...

...Dreadful" serves as well as any other adjective to sum up the decade in question...

...Lunt is very nearly perfect...

...If Fiske is as stated, for a master...

...The author's newspaper instinct has cism as a dramatist...

...After has not pierced its mark...

...Others will probably find it pretty Morrill of Maine, of a plan of international copyright based drastic and bold in its use of material, and will question its "upon reasons of general equity," the Philadelphia Centennial ultimate useful purpose...

...tion of a Mexican empire...

...He has drawn one of those crafty prelates sense-that of individual biography-do we find unity...

...Werfel has not quite achieved this objective...

...This plan offers the character of this neurotic, befuddled, abused and self- an opportunity of doing full justice to the title, and the flamcentered young murderer...

...But ministration, in fact, until "the dreadful decade was ended," by restating the book in stage terms, lie has had to risk criti- are passed in review...

...Of the acting, there is also tion of a permanent acting company, which will form the much to be said-and presently...

...His I believe, one that could never stand on its own feet...

...Few of the other characters broken faith with his prefatory promise to tell his tale without live as much more than types, although Miriam Hopkins makes partisan coloring...

...in David Hannay's life of Diaz...

...senses the power that will some day be his, when he has become Your interest in Werfel's Maximilian does not depend the complete master of his voice...

...This attempt was made while Mr...

...The Black Friday of 1869, the book overboard, except for its theme, and written a well- the Fiske murder, the Panic of 1873, the "Virginius" affair, built play, the Dreiser enthusiasts would have mobbed him...

...He is much too complex a lines the climactic-one somewhat loses touch with one's backcharacter for any except a master dramatist to display in all ground ; life seems well-nigh altogether a matter of robbery, the essential shades...

...Only in the larger not quite so happy...

...A brilliant writer can make even the dull moments repertory company, the Theatre Guild has selected for its initial of history throb...

...It is not fate the pathos of heroic futility, the tragedy of mistaken idealism, nor circumstance that crushes Maximilian, but his own unand the eternal vitality which centers about the mental tor- solved inner conflict, an idealism that soars far beyond his ture of any man who is called upon to make decisions of high own power to achieve, and therefore falls, like the arrow that moment against the whole trend of his inner character...

...the play-in spite of the vast labor applied to building up Perhaps-the drawback to a mode of treatment which undersentimental sympathy for him...

...There was no middle ground-except, not allowed him to overlook the scandalous...

...One has the sense of listening to a leisurely bitain artists in a wide variety of roles...

...Seitz's Sondra Finchely unexpectedly sympathetic...

...Its narrative "hits the high spots" of the decade or, to quote the scenes are too broken, its glimpses of events in Clyde Griffith's foreword, "chronicles the more unusual . . . political, physical, life too fragmentary, to build up the necessary absorption in moral, military, and financial calamities...

...plement to the Theatre Guild program notes...

...Seitz's narrative has color and movement ; evidences...

...This, however, is liberals, and all self-seeking treachery on the side of the cleri- buncombe...

...It is a statement all black and BOOK S all white with none of those shadings so important to an under- The Dreadful Decade: Detailing Some of the Phases of the standing of a complex situation...

...The pace of Maximilian what has often been called the ghastly story of Maximilian and Juarez is too slow and measured...

...October 27, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 615 Which leads to a remark on Werfel's statement of the Mexican problem of Church and state...

...And in whom antique British fiction abounded but whose puerile of all forms, that unity is the most difficult to present in obviousness would in real life inevitably defeat his own ends...

...For unless it be taken as a laboratory of 1876, which gave the entire nation a broader economic and study in dementia, one can only regard it as misleading senti- industrial outlook and supplied a distinct impetus toward the mentality or as an attempt to negate personal responsibility development of a higher American creative art...

...But beIt is the largest of the subscription theatres, which is indirect tween those moments, you do not find yourself carried on by testimony of popular favor in a new type of undertaking...

...how far it re-creates the characters of the book...

...that of a master, despite the frequent flashes of power that it All in all, Mr...

...If he had thrown Street gamblers are described...

...The victims were sore and Dreadful Decade, the "strange" story of the 'seventies, as its angry...

...With his scandal...

...In the physical portrayal of this all, it matters little to us whether Hamlet ever existed-or character, Mr...

...It is worth remembering, however, when reading Mr...

...On that score, the production year, moreover, there is an added point of interest in the crea- is quite worthy of its material...

...The French em- and in many respects, it is the finest work I have ever seen peror gave Maximilian the support of French troops, and then, him do...

...is also memorable in these days of sloppy acting, but Mr...

...At this time, he says, the IF WRITING history by decades be one of the American Church was "maddened by spoliation," and adds that "a swarm reactions to Wells's "Outline," the work of covering the of pillagers, fraudulent purchasers, and generals in search of years in their tens moves on apace : we have had The Fabulous booty settled on the confiscated lands...

...The victimizers were thieving, scuffling, intriguing, and jacket-blurb mysteriously whispers, to add, without apologies to lying...

...The carpetbaggers and Wall Of course, he faced an unenviable job...

...There are several moments when Miss Eames might claim In one sense, Werfel has failed...

...on which this play is based...

...scandal, bloodshed, and corruption...

...We do not find here the the play as her own for sheer mute tragedy...

...There is conflict always, but never the same conflict Dudley Digges in his portrait of the Archbishop of Mexico is followed through its different phases...

...Its dramatic suspense...

...mons our reserves of pity and of tenderness...

...He is, primarily, a man of a suf- in good acting...

...Therefore I am more interested And yet, it was a decade in which lay latent the germ of in Patrick Kearney's play as it stands than in discussions of much that was best in its successors...

...No part of the produce 'Forties, The Mauve Decade, and others...

...I recommend the above passage from Hannay as a sup- past twenty odd years...

...There is a new depth and tenderness in Miss cisions...

...And Mr...

...Now we have The was devoted to the public good...

...not forgotten ; and an entire chapter-which to many will Morgan Farley, except for an overtenseness at all times, seem out of proportion-is devoted to the Beecher and Tilton does remarkably well with the material given him...

...Kearney's method is not yet battle, murder, and sudden death...

...Of rather than more crimson aspects the following might have the ethical aspects of the play, those who have read the book been touched upon : the advocacy before Congress, by Senator can judge for themselves...

...Lunt's voice relaxes, one us...

...One is that of Clara Eames as the tragic Emficiently common type to give him universal interest, placed press Carlotta, and the other the Porfirio Diaz of Edward G. before us dramatically at the periods of his most difficult de- Robinson...

...At several points, you might leave the many thousands of annual subscribers provide it with a gener- theatre as comfortably as after the conclusion of any part of ous budget at the beginning of each season with which it can the Wagnerian trilogy...

...Both men were summoned against their will to mastery is still inadequate...

...bear to similar problems of our own, lies their importance to But in those moments where Mr...

...T HE opening of the Theatre Guild season has, quite justly, If the play holds your attention and sympathy almost to the become one of the most important annual theatrical events...

...His Maximilian becomes episode and, by dint of a searching study of the mind of the type of defeated humanity-defeated because self-conquest Maximilian himself, fashioned from it a play brimming with has not preceded the attempt at outer conquest...

...3.50...

...is animated and picturesque...

...It never jumps to of Austria, encouraged by Napoleon III to attempt the forma- attention as the drums of tragedy beat high...

...Edward colorful pages, that most horrors have their mitigations...

...The tortured workings of his mind are laid bare to Eames's portrait of Carlotta, a vibrancy of emotion which us, and it is from this, and this alone, that the play lays claim slips through quite unclouded by technique or that cerebral to our interest, captures our emotional response, and sum- quality which has been characteristic of much of her past work...

...Thus, Goodman's direction of this play is swift and intelligentthe "dreadful decade," actually, is not all a chronicle of crime, perhaps the best that could be done with disjointed material...

...The play is, The author has told a tale without pointing a moral...

...Werfel has taken this stark in favor of honest characterization...

...This rarely beautiful and effective...

...History of the United States from Reconstruction to ResumpI do not pretend to have any deep historical knowledge tion, by Don C. Seitz...

...If one longs at times for a deeper undercurrent of at the moment of crisis, deserted him, leaving him to be shot majesty in this pathetic figure, one soon realizes that Mr...

...But in the direction, there nucleus of all its productions and give the New York public is little brilliancy to make up for the one essential defect of a much coveted opportunity of watching the versatility of cer- the play...

...It was a crass, ignoble period, a day f1 n fl merican Tragedy of barbaric wealth and bad taste, of plush carpets, horrible T O start with an honest confession, I have merely glanced portieres, gaudy wall-paper, offensive gilt and crystal chanthrough the pages of Theodore Dreiser's two-volume novel deliers, graceless silver, blatant buildings, of brag and bluster...

...end, it is because of its succession of great moments...

...Robfacing the treachery of his French allies, facing the tragedy of inson's series of sharply etched portraits is rapidly becoming his wife's approaching dementia, and, at last, facing the de- one of the premier exhibits of the Theatre Guild...

...For he is all of that-from what boyancies of an extravagantly criminal and vulgar epoch are I have read of the book and gathered from both hearsay and strung on an easily running thread of fluent journalese writing...

...cision between utter abandonment of his project and almost Arnold Daly's clear and decisive attack as Marshal Bazaine certain death...

...Robinson singleness of problem which makes Hamlet and Macbeth great gives so much forthrightness and active power to his Diaz, as a as plays...

...the setting by a sort of shallow determinism...

...One is conscious of a nervous strain that defeats itself...

...the Indian wars and Custer's massacre, the entire Grant adAnd they, of course, will compose the initial audiences...

...aside, in 1872, by Congress as "a public park or pleasure...

...upon your knowledge of Mexican history, nor upon previous Two other portraits stand out vividly in a play abounding interest in his character...

...614 THE COMMONWEAL October 27, 1926 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Maximilian and Juarez theatrical terms...

...He has not yet succeeded in makmake stupendous decisions and to abide by the consequences...

...as a common adventurer by order of Benito Juarez, then the Lunt has given doer the obvious chances for theatrical effect dictator of Mexican liberalism...

...ographer-and one suspects that the fault is not entirely As if to provide for the simultaneous debut of its entire Werfel's...

...In the play, all civic virture is on the side of Diaz's Gibbs, that "now at last it can be told...

...The story of the Tweed Ring is related with fairwork, that of Katherine Wilson as Roberta, stands forth with ness and accuracy, and nowhere can the author be said to have distinction and feeling power...

...ing his voice convey the same dramatic notes as his face and In that, and in the universal analogy which their decisions body...

...We have, rather, a series of one-act plays-of Maxi- foil to Maximilian's inner sensitiveness, that he quite overmilian facing the decision between liberalism and conservatism, shadows the intended power of the unseen Juarez...

...And among its rosier Yet here, too, the hand of genius might have done more...