The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
May 19, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 49 THE...
...There can be no question of the fineness of his personal has some engaging moments in the smaller part of a secretary achievement...
...Every nation rejoices in a few exuberant eccentrics who provide excellent entertainment for the home but who should be restrained from giving public performances abroad...
...Everyone instinctively loves Alphonse Daudet just as everyone loves Dickens, unless he is afraid of being thought old-fashioned, but Leon Daudet, passionately as he admires his father, has inherited only one small corner of the paternal mantle...
...It is a far journey from the mystic power of to their reputations...
...If he is not actually witty Daudet is always caustic or scurrilous, and he has a trick of writing at the top of his voice that dragoons our attention...
...If the Actors' Theatre ings of the first act, the petulance of the second, and the can see dramatic salvation only in obvious and not very stimucapitulation of the third, she keeps, for the most part, to a lating revivals, perhaps one should ask no more of them than welcome naturalness...
...He still sees life in pigeonholes, and in hitting back at its frequently cruel smugness, he uses a broken weapon...
...There is, for example, ity of imagination can achieve...
...Paula Trueman also beauty...
...The torrent of anecdote and comment sweeps the reader along without any effort on his part...
...It is good fun and clean fun, never comes within novels...
...ON DAUDET is one of those men whom France asks us not to take seriously...
...Mary Ellis takes the part of Rosario-the young lost...
...Harold Minjer in power of soul-reading and his will, but rarely persuades through his eighteenth role in two years, this time as an old man, shows the genius of love...
...It is devoted to the service of the king and the Church and French nationalism...
...The casting in the credible old lady-with no mincing break of the voice, no Actors' Theatre revival last year was better balanced and absurdly tottering steps, and no forgetfulness of the utter the entire play moved with a quicker and more effective pace, charm which may clothe the dignity of age...
...Beam's, the unmarried pair of thieves completely triumphs in wit and human depth over the inmates of the boarding house...
...One Macmillan Book a Week a gu pa h BOOKS Memoirs of Leon Daudet, edited atd translated by Arthur Kingsland Griggs...
...Some T HAT amazing institution, the Neighborhood Playhouse, day more and more actors will realize the extraordinary benehas cut a little acting cameo to lay beside its earlier gems fits which repertory production brings to their work and also of this season...
...The Neighborhood Playhouse, in championing reperingly its own...
...Probable price, $2.00 At your book store or from 60 Fifth Avenue THE MACMILLAN COMPANY New York, N. Y. Atlanta Boston Chicago Dallas San Francisco ness in symbolism and incident, and a lack of adequate motivation for many of the amazingly rapid reformations of character, and you find little cause for rejoicing in a play that must have offered limitless opportunities to the mind of a really great playwright...
...We learn that Zola lisped, that Dreyfus had a traitor's complexion, that Monet was bearded and extremely cultured, and that Victor Hugo had a sensual handwriting, whatever that may be...
...5.oo...
...sional overindulgence toward the waywardness of men in a But it would be a mistake to rank the play, as given, much man's world...
...On the other hand, it has many very poignant situations, a great deal of zealous abhorrence of hypocrisy, and many very lofty, if incomplete, passages of spiritual beauty...
...These are the bright spots in a long and tiresome and out-ofjoint evening...
...That is negative praise, but so much buffoonery of today is dull that the fact is worth mentioning...
...result that even the most obvious gags get by and much of With this warning and comparison, we can pass eagerly to the quieter humor and more of the higher satire are slightly the acting...
...Arrangements have been made for binding Volume III in leather or in cloth, information regarding which will be supplied on application to The Commonweal...
...By protracted correspondence with Rome and various points and rties in France, Belgium and Holland, Fr...
...All this is pleasant reading for those who have an appetite for the hors-d'oeuvres of literary criticism...
...a metallic burst of tears in the second act which jumps Rosario abruptly out of character...
...From now on this play will be given the first half of each week, and the resplendent Cyrano the latter half...
...Miss Sands has but Mr...
...May 19, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 49 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Romantic Young Lady again his consistent progress toward creative artistry...
...This particular plays is hardly a test of one's apprecialady of romantic ideals who finds her real romance at last in tion of intellectual comedy, and there is no use flattering one's the person of Luis Felipe de Cordoba, a writer of romantic self that it is...
...The policy of the paper is quite simple...
...Perhaps this is the quality which Shaw finds kindred to his own and admires...
...In Beau-Strings, the author's mouthpiece for human charity and understanding is one Storm, the unmarried companion of Dennis Welch, a concert singer...
...The mere pleasure which audiences and The Dybbuk to the airy gentleness of The Romantic Young critics alike find in the comparison of work from one producLady, but the splendidly trained repertory players of the Neigh- tion to another must soon find its way back stage and bring borhood take it swiftly and easily each week, alternating in its deserved measure of compensation for hard and unremitting the two plays and giving to each a style completely and absorb- work...
...He has the same genius for external characterization...
...There are good things scattered here and there, of which one of the best is Oscar Wilde's letter to Daudet proclaiming himself the simplest, most candid of mortals, "just like a tiny, tiny child...
...whom she manages to make thoroughly individual and clear Of the play itself, I can only repeat with added emphasis cut...
...Yet-always-there is that Neighborhood Playhouse sings a trifle too softly, and others where she yields to the downtown giving repeated object lessons in what a higher qualobvious temptation to farce the action...
...Unlike Miss Ellis, he is never guilty of little of the Fatherhood of God-a great deal about the power touching the farce key...
...There are many Englishmen, for instance, who chuckle over the die-hard editorials in Blackwood's Magazine, but they would be aghast if they knew how many women's clubs in the Middle-West accept those editorials as a fair statement of British public opinion...
...The monarchy must be set up," says Maurras, "just as all governments in the world have been set up-by force...
...Storm is plainly, in Mr...
...No man can hit off more deftly peculiarities of speech, or manner, or appearance...
...Its general theme is amazingly like Mrs...
...Whether we are interested or not in the French Pretender of the moment, the Action Francaise is excellent reading...
...Beau-Strings T HIS is the last-minute name of the second comedy of C. K. Munro which opened recently...
...This is more than one can say of nine out of above high-class vaudeville...
...tory, is doing a splendid work for the American actor as well Helen and Granville Barker have translated this play from as for the entire American stage...
...The king is dead, long live the king...
...It is only when we come to the last chapter that we are reminded that this bellicose journalist is the champion of a lost cause...
...Editor of Rosary Magaaine The name of the esteemed Editor of the Rosary Magazine is sufficient arantee that this book has not been carelessly written simply to take advantage of the Chicago Congress...
...The title-page and index for Volume III of The CommonWeal are now ready, and will be sent upon request...
...Hampden himself does read into many of the more a genius for characterization and for stylized acting as against inspired lines a singular vision, dignity, and commanding rather less ability for merely type parts...
...In the same way, the section of Americana in the American Mercury, delightful as it is, is hardly the reading we would press into the hands of the thoughtful immigrant...
...Her good points are everywhere contrasted with the destructive beguilements of Miss Gee...
...There is reason for his hatred of Victor Hugo, of Zola, of all politicians and all Jews, indeed for everything that has happened since 1789...
...This is the comes into a worldly English vicarage as a symbol of Christfirst time in months that I have seen a young actress create a like brotherhood and poverty of spirit...
...New York: Dial Press...
...If his diction seems at times a trifle of persistent and egotistical "wishing" and nothing about heavy, it is at least and as always gratefully clear, and achieves humble praying...
...At Mrs...
...He has met all the literary, political, and artistic celebrities in France of the last thirty years, and he displays them like so many wax puppets...
...Add to this an annoying self-consciousSo THE COMMONWEAL May i9, 1926 THE EUCHARISTIC RENAISSANCE By THOMAS M. SCHWERTNER, O.P...
...Munro's mind, the heroine of the piece...
...Daudet has none of his father's imagination and none of his father's kindliness...
...With Dudley Digges at the would make an excellent object lesson for just such a caustic directing helm, and also acting the part of Canon Chasuble, creator of types as Munro...
...The tone self altogether captivating as Cecily Cardew, the evening rolls throughout the greater part is constructive, with only occa- quickly enough to an early curtain...
...These memoirs of Leon Daudet, a selection from his six volumes of souvenirs published between 1913 and 1922, are not dull...
...Beam's-the type portrait of an old maid's activities in a summer hotel-and its faults are even more marked, in that it has less plot and indulges even more openly the author's youthful and sentimental desire to set unmarried couples in the seats of the mighty...
...us Walter Hampden once more in a role which he created Dorothy Sands as Rosario's infinitely wise and captivating in this country-that of Manson, the oriental butler who grandmother really merits the acting first honors...
...He has the great T HIS harmless, if pleasantly unconvincing bit of farce by gift of kindliness and understanding, and the care with which Oscar Wilde, has fallen into good hands again in the he avoids farce by a deft individualization of his characters current Actors' Theatre revival...
...Manson frequently commands through his here and there an admirable tenderness...
...One feels that Miss Ellis has not bestowed quite the loving care on this part that it merits- The Servant in the House forgetting that true high comedy is often a greater test of act- T HE chief interest in this revival is the fact that it shows ing than even the noblest tragedy...
...In the romantic sigh- obviously having an enjoyable time...
...Schwertner has gathered is data like a real historian...
...Here and there one finds a sophis- with Reginald Owen completely farcing that champion sandticated allusion, but not in the offensively advertised fashion wich eater, Algy Moncrieff, and Patricia Collinge making herof most of our heavy-footed American writers...
...Then his practical editorial pen has put it all into readily understandble form for the consumption of the humblest of the million Chicago ilgrims...
...Just as a matter of theatrical record, and without in any way recommending the play, it must be said that Estelle Winwood as the neurotic Miss Gee has done an extremely clever bit of portraiture and that Miss Joan Maclean has made Storm quite as sympathetic and engaging as the author intends...
...Daudet occupies two columns of the front page with scathing invective, and Maurras another two columns with a brilliant display of dialectics...
...Miss Ellis has as fine a gift for comedy as for the a mile of realities, and is acted this time by a good company rich tragedy of Leah in The Dybbuk...
...It standing, and romantic by turns, with a fine sense of the best says a great deal of the brotherhood of man and implies very meaning of comedy...
...But there are moments when her voice this...
...Literature is only his avocation, his real work is the restoration of the Orleans family, for which he and his friend, Charles Maurras, a much abler man, have been pleading daily in the columns of the Action Francaise for the last twenty years...
...what I intimated last year, that it is far from a work of draIan Maclaren is at his best as the novelist-paternal, under- matic genius or of true insight into mystical Christianity...
...He is an irreconcilable Royalist who has finally convinced himself that no good thing can come out of the third republic...
...the Spanish of Martinez Sierra, and if their work is as faithful to the original as it is adroit, one must grant that Sierra The Importance o f Being Earnest excels in the delicate art of high comedy...
...Apparently, audiences come to a ten comedies served up on Broadway during the last two Wilde comedy prepared to shriek with laughter-with the seasons...
...This is perhaps sufficient comment on the immature and as yet confused state of Munro's mind and judgment...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 2
