The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
May 26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 77 THE...
...The Shadow of the Glee (Synge) the world in his masterpiece was first, his dedication of his The Curtain riseseach evening at 8:30 sharp great powers to the teaching of the moral purpose of man's ADMISSION 5O existence...
...If a group like the Theatre airing...
...If the chapter concerned with find room for their gloomy observations...
...Perhaps the best easily the most distinguished, with Alice Brady, Ann Herding, of the French translations is that of M. Andre Perate (Paris: and one or two others approaching her very closely...
...American optimism receives its death blow in a sound material for farce...
...The "awful effect of spend most of their time in playing for farce effects...
...One even susclose-a posing of the dubious question, "Can we be as good pects that many serious Broadway offerings are unintentional as last year...
...and...
...Among Friday, May 28th Cathleen ni Hoxlihax (Yenta) The Yellow Bittern (Corkary) the benefits which Dante conferred on Italy and, indeed, on Sunday, May 30th...
...It gets rid Conners, the author of last year's Applesauce (the name of of the family affairs of the Theatre Guild in the first two a play, be it understood, and not an epithet...
...The delightful utterly of its main purpose because of the general murky conmusic of Richard Rodgers, the syncopated lyrics of Lorenz tagion of three numbers...
...Give us a few dramatists of real power, about workmanship and dictioli are helpful toward the undergrace, and beauty of thought, and we shall quickly discover standing of details...
...Barry In one respect only it has broadened its scope...
...The Power of Dante, by Charles Hall Pauline Lord, Helen Gahagan, and Lynn Fontanne...
...In this group Catherine Cornell is reviewer "the most satisfactory rendering...
...But we can forgive much of any evening that preT HE Theatre Guild Studio-meaning the permanent sents us with the "too percent American musical comedy in junior staff of that nearly venerable organization-must the best traditional manner," with the title Rose of Arizona have had an attack of self-consciousness in approaching the and the locale a "terrace of the Rosa Raisa Hotel, on the second edition of the Garrick Gaieties...
...Not claiming to add anything new FOUR PERFORMANCES of the following Plays to Dante scholarship, Mr...
...It Guild juniors or the Neighborhood Playhouse has any one establishes glamor, speed, precision...
...It is the typical last resort of Broadway when posed to lie in being as unlike Broadway as possible...
...We cannot fail," says Dr...
...Its paramount charm is sup- cleverness...
...is a favorite with many, chiefly because its notes resume so But among the younger women of the present stage, there is well the findings of earlier American Dante scholarship...
...Any one Librairie de l'Art Catholique...
...The informal review sets out-in theory, at sions to various perversions, and lines such as those on the virleast-to revive wit, humor and ease, lightness, a dose rap- ginity of Queen Elizabeth which are the natural material of port between audience and players, and originality...
...Hart, and the care-free personality of half a dozen of the leaders filled in the chinks...
...A Blue Danube interlude takes the place of is in order concerning the key in which The Patsy is played...
...Yet Lucia Moore as the maternal hilarious little tragedy known as Home Sweet Home, or, by tyrant of tears and Mary Stills as the over-riding older sister inference, Polyanna of the Prairies...
...has put a good numbers instead of spending most of its time in parodying the wholesome play on the boards and has added to this minimum parent...
...Then-on with the play l reasoning, his strict logic...
...everything else fails to pull at the box-office...
...It is a real Well-the Garrick Gaieties nearly hit the mark last year, delight to praise the good numbers-they deserve it-but they although the influence of the Grand Street Follies and the don't deserve to be infected...
...Mary Grandgent (Boston: Marshall Jones...
...2.00) which collects a series of BarbourPage Foundation lectures...
...In such a list, where do the pessimists the tone suitably cultural...
...There is a certain difficulty in finding revised and are supplied with serviceable introductions...
...First of all, she approaches the books shall I read first...
...The Italian version is obtainable in Dante: to the false mood of Miss Moore and Miss Stills, but not ,Tutte le Opere (New York: Oxford University Press...
...The approach is fresh and modern, to join this group...
...SCHOOL OF IRISH STUDIES Another point of view is elaborated in Dante and His In6 East Twelfth Street, New York City fluence, by Thomas Nelson Page (New York : Charles Announcing Scribner's Sons...
...It may cheerfully be replied thereto part of the misunderstood younger sister with the utmost sim- that though the dimensions of Dante bibliography are enormous, plicity...
...You no longer have to be intimately acquainted with requirement a plenitude of wit, keen observation, under-runthe Theatre Guild season to get the point of half the bur- ning pathos and flashes of fairly high-grade comedy...
...This year's On the reverse side of the shield, there are several very inwork is a very conscious effort...
...Here are summarized now I would venture to add that, given the right series of in attractive form the conclusions of a lifetime's study of the plays, Claiborne Foster will almost surely establish her right elements of Dante's power...
...It is too late in the Brent cavorting from educational five-foot books through hali- season to say which...
...It builds up to many situations of real poignancy and Suzanne Lenglen and Helen Wills, respectively, with devastat- to family situations which are far too close to truth to be ing malice...
...Longamong the younger men that particular gift of versatility which fellow's translation, issued by the Houghton Mifflin Company, ends by becoming either great or just tiresomely superficial...
...the cast...
...In a group where one feels rather deeper list might be extended...
...The show as a whole fails Charlot review protruded itself everywhere...
...about Dante's career and intentions...
...ing through the illusion so adroitly prepared by the rest of The musical marathon is a bit called Mountain Greenery...
...This is analyzed carefully and revealingly, in the true scholar's best manner...
...He was 436 West Twenty-Seventh Street, New York City most interested in the Divine Comedy as an educative force...
...Junk of intends to be a spectacle...
...It can command the services of fabulously high- racing good evening need have nothing to do with smut, allupriced stars...
...All this is pretty good fare...
...Gaieties-its utter simplicity, directness, and ease...
...One feels the chill border-line of Mexico and Arizona...
...May 26, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 77 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The New Garrick Gaieties tional...
...but what impresses us most, perhaps, is his curiosity...
...It was a good start, and I remem- The Patsy ber feeling that a second year ought to bring out surprisingly O NE advantage of protracted absence from Broadwayfine things...
...different numbers and several that have no place in any cleanThis brings up the whole question of the informal as against minded show whether emanating from an art theatre or from the Broadway reviews-and the subject deserves a little honest the depths of Broadway itself...
...Plays are what we morality is especially terse and sympathetic, the later chapters need-not actresses...
...Both have been acting is dying out...
...But it comes very near at times to breaktosis to the great god success...
...That was the charm of last year's goads or whatever you want to call them...
...This modern magazine advertising on an impressionistic young may be the fault of direction, or it may be the yielding to mind" is exhibited in The Psychopathic Ward, with Romney temptation in the middle of a long run...
...and secondly, their application in the forms of RESERVED SEATS ............................$1.25 beauty and majesty in which he clothed his great ideas...
...in demand for such purposes) to do his best stunts with the Before we talk more about Miss Foster, however, a word family jewels...
...play which you have not been able to review before...
...Grandgent, that almost no era in the American theatre has greater poten- "to note the distinctness of Dante's concepts, his clear-cut tial acting genius than our own...
...o.8o...
...The following sumThen, she takes great care to let her comedy and pathos flow maries, arrived at with the friendly cooperation of various pubinto one another without the abrupt breaks and mannerisms lishers, may be of some value: which so often crash through illusion...
...To be sure, musical breath of it in the opening scene, and another blast at the comedy of this variety is not hard to satirize...
...In most cases it can command a this sort makes one gasp at the paucity of mind behind it...
...among which are the Bohn's library edition (New York: HarPerhaps this is as good a time as any to break a lance with court, Brace and Company...
...Instead, the new show is at best just where it whether through sickness or other cause-is the possiwas last year, and in other places suffers from the obvious strain bility of discovering so late in the season a perfectly delightful of trying to live up to a successful past...
...A perhaps a greater choice for future greatness than in many more recent translation of the Divine Comedy, completed by long years...
...If it were not for this slight Knopf...
...The music, its nasal chorus ladies, its hopeless conventionalities, and crowd is out to repeat, in the full blaze of publicity, a spon- its gallant American army of six chorus men, alert in the art taneous bit of effervescence originally designed for a few of song and unison gesture, is unbelievably rich in points, private performances only...
...There are one or two Adequate editions and translations of Dante are, of course, places in the last act when she succumbs for a few moments indispensable...
...But this Rose of Arizona, with its lugubriously familiar and defiance, its feeble jest raises a spectre of truth...
...Naturally the of mere popularity...
...currents stirring, we have seen this season and last some amaz- Lectures have become a favorite method of introduction to ing progress in the work of Helen Hayes, Blanche Yurka, subjects of interest...
...quality of personal devotion and interest, and the services of It is just plain dirt for its own sake without a vestige of intelligent writers and satirists...
...Broadway does certain things amazingly well...
...The rest of the musical score is distinctly conven- degenerate into farce is increasingly common among the run 78 THE COMMONWEAL May 26, 1926 of even fairly good actors nowadays...
...They forget that a BOOK S cheaply bought laugh brings a cheap reputation in the end to the actor himself...
...She never strives for an effect, but lets it come a handful of easily accessible books will supply an adequate naturally, with much of that spontaneous humor and grace knowledge of what scholarship agrees is essential information which distinguish Helen Hayes from her clever imitators...
...The point is worth mentioning because this tendency It is the logical if less pointed successor to last year's Man- to forget the possibilities of fine comedy and to let everything hattan...
...And even though the question is put in mockery satires...
...2.00) is the collection Ellis has recently brought her fine talent to a high pitch, and of Lowell Institute lectures for 1917...
...Among the German versions of them, by a turn of the wheel, or by the discipline of one we may signal out the unusually scholarly achievement of very difficult part, might pass far beyond the dangerous ground August Vezin (Munich: Kosel and Pustet...
...2.50) tinctly popular appeal-those who have mastered the artifice is notably fine and has been termed by at least one competent of acting if not its art...
...Philip It was obviously written as a very human comedy-not as a Loeb and Romney Brent give us inside impersonations of farce...
...There are, to begin with, the actresses of dis- .Henry Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press...
...There is a good skit on the crime wave, in which a Patsy is good theatre, good entertainment and-note this-has household, anxious to get in the papers, hires a burglar (much Claiborne Foster in the cast...
...Cary's English version, the best known of the break, her performance would be a little masterpiece in its verse translations, has been issued in various forms, preferable kind...
...The lesque...
...The Twisting of the Rope (Hyde) the most valuable part of a beautifully written book...
...Page wished simply "to present in by the School Players at succinct form a brief sketch of the life of the poet of poets and THE CELLAR THEATRE (HUDSON GUILD) of the conditions amid which that life was cast...
...BOOKS FOR THE DANTE PRIZE WORKER Miss Foster's acting is an excellent study in the deft avoid- "~ F I wish to write an essay about Dante," inquired a recent ance of farce-all the more difficult to maintain because of correspondent in whimsical perplexity, "which hundred the mistakes of the others...
...0.85) and the Everyman's library those confirmed pessimists who announce that the art of fine edition (New York: E. P. Dutton...
...5.00...
...Wda YMay 26th Cathlete Ni Hoxtihax (Yaa) Riders to the Sea (Synge) and the chapter dealing with Dante and his teaching is, perhaps, Saturday, May 29th...
...2.50) until the major burden of the play has passed and the ending or The Complete Works of Dante (New York : Alfred A. is comfortably within sight...
...Sad news...
...last year's Mexican number and is quite as graceful...
...It knows how to create supreme opportunity, it is to show that wit and fun and a a spectacle...
...It never the cheapest humorists of old-fashioned burlesque...
Vol. 4 • May 1926 • No. 3
