The Play
C., R. Dana Skinner, T.
642 THE COMMONWEAL November 3, 1926 THE...
...The present play is more than fifteen the feeling of overacting...
...This theatre, which was the birthplace Miss Ellis has made a remarkable impression on the Ameriof such mixed fare as Desire Under the Elms, Outside Lookin' can stage since she abandoned musical comedy for more serious In, The Great God Brown and a long list of experimental roles...
...He has told his story tenthat is like that of a child...
...when New York will feel it owes much to Mr...
...AN AUTHENTIC, GRIPPING, ENTERTAINING PLAY OF IRISH LIFE...
...It is one of a test...
...To think that the gun is not loaded dancing that, with few exceptions, is uninspired, and comedy does not bring the dead back to life...
...She has at once tenderness and the firmness of among other productions, John Masefield's version of Anne a rock...
...Kenneth Macgowan has taken over the by Mary Ellis, Rodion by Basil Sydney, and Bezak, the inmanagement of the Actors' Theatre, and the Mac- quisitor, by Sydney Greenstreet...
...It probably appealed to chorus causes one to shudder and exclaim, "Is there no end him for its dramatic irony only...
...And here you find yourself right at the crux of the students' picnic-passages where talk supplants action...
...642 THE COMMONWEAL November 3, 1926 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Humble lies in the acting of the three leading parts, Sonia as played N OW that Mr...
...Miss Ellis gives her a touch of the Night, to be called Venetian Love...
...For that, presumably, Mr...
...When brought face to face with present fine purpose...
...Not so often, it will make Now I am quite ready to believe that Mr...
...bear the mark of keen intelligence-and that is much in these But in all other respects, it has a far deeper insight into spir- good days...
...So, if Mr...
...prove his love for her, were to face his dragon and then ex- But instead of obstructing the feeling of drama-as where claim, "If she wants me to do this, she cannot love me...
...But it is that one by a three-word title and about ten words of dialogue using exception which may give Happy Go Lucky its lease on life...
...McClintic has made fine actors of them all...
...But I am inostentation, but evidently sincere purpose, he has set out to clined to think that as Sonia she has met and mastered a much give a dignified season of serious entertainment, beginning with more difficult task...
...so, he violates all his inner instincts which, quite naturally, cannot accord with his theorizing...
...Reed's quiet Mr...
...In this case, we have fetching, you will be glad to know she is included in the cast...
...And so, I submit that that, with one exception, would never give support to the an otherwise excellent play has been given a pernicious twist theory that we are a humorous people...
...only in a title that serves as comment on the play-it cannot ring true to our inner knowledge to imply that because life Happy Go Lucky is a test, and a thoroughly hard and discouraging one, the love O NE swallow may not make a summer, but one act will of God is a superstition...
...This, I think, is largely due to his years old and bears many marks of a type of play that has facial expression...
...We do not find here the shallow determinism of Dreiser, that one might have soon forgotten his earlier acting tradithe blatant evasion of personal responsibility, nor the attempt tions...
...J. P. McEvoy, the author, she trusts...
...And in Guthrie McClintic's ence...
...Reed's theory of justifiable murder...
...Next, test at all...
...He is subjected to a crucial God Loves Us third degree, but escapes by allowing suspicion to be thrown T HIS ironic title heads the first play of the Actors' Theatre on a poor workman...
...Both elements have grown opera and Russian dancers are all subjected to hilarious treatout of the play itself, and so are a genuine part of it...
...Wire stage-setting and direction which make God Loves Us a real walkers, monologists, actors of capsule drama, gems from the event in the American theatre...
...McEvoy had a musical comedy...
...There are many obvious defects in Irving's dramatic ver- The superficial and bitter answer would, of course, be sion of this story-unnecessary events, such as the Russian "No...
...But plays, like deeds, have to this sort of thing...
...In doing Platt, the designer, is to blame...
...The third act blooms suddenly and surprisingly into the liveIn a play that has in it so much searching human sympathy, liest and most comical burlesque of the "two-a-day" which so keen an understanding of the futilities in many people's might be hoped for in a brace of seasons...
...Sydney's work as the student has some very fine and initiative...
...I fantastic settings are imposed on a simple play-this only use this illustration because it is so common a human experi- heightens the dramatic action...
...It is marred only by a grotesquely oldthe cruelty of a tenement landlord who has used the poverty fashioned and unconvincing setting of an island in the Neva of Sonia Martinova to try to make her yield to him, Rodion in the second act...
...All three are definite and gowan-Jones-O'Neil triumvirate has passed into dramatic interesting characterizations, and one of them, Sonia, is history, the Greenwich Village Theatre has become the arena supremely fine...
...Alone they lost its popularity among the radicals of the modern theatre...
...of this morbid man excellently and with far greater naturalThe dramatic author was a younger son of Sir Henry Irving ness than in much of his recent work...
...Greenstreet again in legitimate parts...
...I am inclined to has done, persuades him through her simple and childlike think that this title, and the use made of it at the closing faith, to accept the burden of his guilt and give himself up...
...This little girl with the faith of a child Laurence Irving's dramatization of Dostoievsky's Crime and has no great emotional scenes...
...For the rest, Happy Go Lucky is no worse and no man Thompson has made a modified use of the "constructivist" better than the average musical show that comes to town...
...Then why assume that because a Divinity has placed the most smoothly acted performances I have ever seen, with us in this life as a test, life itself should be a bed of roses and the hand of the director felt always, but never seen...
...The main interest, however, human effort, can be no less than a part of the great advenNovember 3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 643 ture toward eternity is ignored...
...He has naturally eloquent eyes...
...Livingston puts his theory into action and kills the landlord...
...It is as if one of the knights mechanical civilization over the whole action...
...In the total impression it leaves, to be judged in their practical relation to life and in their Happy Go Lucky is far from distinguished...
...But he frequently gives and died in 194...
...fulfilled desires...
...Furthermore, it would be no out poignantly-a perfect bit of character expression...
...often serve to make a play...
...With little was one of the season's notable achievements...
...An occasionally labored American Tragedy, in so far, that is, as it portrays the diction only adds to this total effect...
...But bring the action of God into a play-whether in dialogue or Mr...
...When we want to prove love, we invariably put it to direction, we see the evidences of real genius...
...esting character in the play...
...it is cut from effect upon thousands of human minds-and not solely by the most ordinary of goods, with music that is fair to middling, their vague intentions...
...some very poor points...
...of the last act, combine to give a false key to an otherwise Even then, his theoretical atheism does not permit him to penetrating study of American life in the grip of the business follow her...
...It is then that Sonia, knowing what he season under the new management...
...That would be absurdly contrary to our own Of the individual performances, that of J. C. Nugent stands human experience and actions...
...Her performance of Leah in The Dybbuk last year productions, has now been leased by Carl Reed...
...The by the ambitious and self-frustrated people who make up the intellectually proud student bows and surrenders to the faith millions of our urban population...
...For Mr...
...The the essentials of true drama still hold the piece together and fact that suffering, incompetency, and the futility of so much give it vitality and strength...
...a skyscraper construction, which hangs like the menace of a T. C. KLAW THEATRE, West 45th Street EVENINGS AT 8:30, MATINEES THURSDAY AND SATURDAY JOHN L. SHINE Will present his all Irish Players in T. C. Murray's Sensational Play With a Stellar Cast, Including JOHN L. SHINE UNA O'CONNER JULIE HARTLEY-MILBURN The wonderful play that was awarded the Silver Medal in competition at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin-Direct from a year's Record Breaking run in London...
...Another well-acted part is that Rodion Raskolnikoff, a lonely student, embittered by the of the young doctor busybody as played by Junius Matthews...
...has continued here the vein of The Potters, and set before us But here we have, at least, an illustration of the human the amazing and tragic hurly-burly of modern life as lived channels through which spiritual action often passes...
...If type of setting introduced here last season by the Moscow you like Lina Abarbanell, and there are those who find her players in Carmencita and the Soldier...
...There are of old, sent out by his beloved lady on a dangerous quest to stages on two levels, where the action alternately takes place...
...of a new enterprise...
...A vastly different picture from derly and well and then, by his title, practically asked us if, the turgid emotionalism of Dreiser...
...soul to mold actions and bring either destruction or redemp- He has contributed so long to the gaiety of the musical stage tion...
...that title...
...But lacking an essential But for all that, it retains the stamp of authentic drama...
...in such a world, we can truthfully say, "God loves us...
...He bows to her rather than to the God in Whom institutions of a big city...
...It restraint in the use of his mouth, the whole impression beis, in its way, a sort of prelude to the theme of Dreiser's comes at times that of grimacing...
...itual values, a much keener perception of the power of the It is good to see Mr...
...Wood- ment...
...An unskilful actress might make her appear nothing Pedersdotter, and a comic opera based on Shakespeare's Twelfth more than a moron...
...The number is circumscribed lives, and so piercing a satire of the rotarianism given by Ralph Whitehead and Madeline Cameron, and used by employers to soften their "strictly business" decisions, stranger things would happen than the transplanting of their it is more grateful to be able to speak enthusiastically of the act to the very vaudeville it so unmercifully guys...
...But trouble with so much modern thinking and writing...
...McEvoy or anyone else decides to perhaps, is that of a newcomer, Douglas Montgomery...
...He conveys the brooding intensity The Humble makes an interesting start for this new season...
...But his work does struggle of a sensitive and morbid mind at grips with murder...
...The time may come divine fire, inarticulate but radiant...
...That is largely true of Happy Go Lucky no such radical intention in his conscious mind when selecting -one of those eye and ear entertainments whose opening the present ironic title for his play...
...l"-Iuch of what she must convey Punishment, under the title of The Humble, and promising, is unspoken...
...would convey everything necessary...
...smug platitudes of science and officialdom, has built up a On the whole, the production is most creditable to Mr...
...As Bezak, he is, next to Miss Ellis, the most interto create an utterly false sympathy for criminal instinct...
Vol. 4 • November 1926 • No. 26
