The Play
W., R. Dana Skinner, T.
298 T H E C O M M O N W E A L January 19, 1997 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Brothers Karamazov THE ultimate machinery of the Theatre Guild repertory season was put in motion with the...
...Copeau himself came over from France to direct the present produc- tion, and a magnificent job he has made of it, thanks to the lavish and unrestrained support of the Guild and the excellent acting material at his disposal...
...Ebene- zer Marvin Smalhy (I831-77) humorist, who succeeded John...
...Reverend Benjamin D. Hill (I842q916) C.P...
...Its emotional intensity must be sustained unflaggingly...
...Howard Hayne Caldwell (i823-58...
...achievement, destruction, and beauty born from chaos...
...Caroline Daven-port Swan...
...The other, Grouchenka, is a woman of the taverns, a wanton in the view of some people, but with the latent power of becoming a saint--a woman whose unguided instinct leads her to understand beauty and nobility and above all to trust blindly the man she loves at a moment when that trust means his redemption...
...Caroline Russell Bispham...
...Ames repeat his Iolanthe triumph...
...He graduated at Yale in 1814, was an instructor in the United States navy, author of several volumes of verse, of the anthology mentioned above, of an historical novel, of the dedi- cation ode for the unveiling of the Halleck statue...
...It is rare that one feels in the short compass of a play the sweep and penetration, the symphonic quality, of a novel...
...Nor is it a play of men entirely...
...Rzv...
...and Dominican Devotions...
...and The Land of Pi~es and Gorillas...
...This is no commonplace tale, this story of the interaction of four male minds over-shadowed by the sinister reprobate who is their father...
...Old-timers will remember that after the first few bars, the overture strikes up the tune most familiar to us these days as Hail, Hail, the Gang's all Here...
...Lorenzo Da Ponte (I748-I838...
...Laura Keene (x820-73) the great actress...
...John Barclay, tall--vastly tall thin and humorous, now plays the pirate chief...
...Mary Ann Wetmore Spooner (1794-1877...
...Wendell Phillips Stafford...
...But who ever hears of George Hill when Catholics enumerate their writers...
...Katerina is played by Clare Eames, and, for once this season, she is a disappointment...
...he was librarian of the State Department, consul to Asia Minor, etc...
...January 19, 1927 THE COMMONWEAL 299 William Williams, recently Strephon, now parades and de-liciously sings as the unfortunate Frederic, the slave of duty...
...running the gamut from exalta- tion to terror, from brave humility to diabolic pride...
...Mary Newmarch Prescott (I849-I9oi) sister of Harriet Prescott Spofford...
...Colonel Theodore O'Hara (1828-67) whose stirring Bivouac of the Dead is inscribed over the gateways of most of our national cemeteries...
...TnBOnoEB MAYNAaD, poet and critic, is the author of Drums of Defeat...
...And she is a most welcome newcomer at that, with a delicate coloratura voice, a delightful pair of sympathetic eyes and a quiet, pointed humor...
...and Scholasticism and Vitalism...
...Robert Dwyer Joyee (I836-83...
...Iolanthe breathed its spell over New York audiences, and now those same audiences are catching a new enchantment in the Pirates--holdlng their sides a little tighter than ever, revelling again in delicious music, and with one accord proclaiming Mr...
...Paxscs WIrJ-tAM of Sweden is the second son of King Gustav...
...He has, in fact, retained all the artists of the Iolanthe company...
...Ioxt~ SUgaRY $da~NOAN is a poet, and a staxd~at and translator of the classics...
...Perhaps the following list of names may not be unwelcome to readers of your periodical: George Henry Miles (1824-7I...
...Evwtr~ Cta~a~ is a New York critic of books, and a contributor to the general press...
...HzNRY SOMBaV'ILt.~ is a writer on economics, and the London corre-spondent for the Toronto Star...
...The physical strain alone of the tavern scene, with its wild dance, its moment of projected suicide and its final pitch of exaltation as Dmitri bravely accepts the punish- ment for another's guilt, demands an equipment in voice and physique such as few actors possess...
...The Pirates o/ Penzance H OW does he do it ? I mean, of course, Winthrop Ames and the magic he sheds around Gilbert and Sullivan operas...
...In the neurotic and fear-stricken Dmitri who achieves redemption, in the strong and lovely soul of Aliocha the young priest, in the intellectual pride and atheism of Ivan, and in the epileptic de- generacy of Smerdiakov the illegitimate brother, we have one of those amazing groups, occasionally found within one family, which seem to sum up all the conflicting elements of life: spiritual, physical and mental...
...ERNEST SUa'X~ZRIatND BA'rEs, formerly professor of p.hilosophy in the University of Oregon, is a writer on educational and literary tonics...
...John Savage (I828-88...
...Bernhard Berenson ("Mary Logan...
...THOMAS M. SCHWER'rNER, O.P., is the author of The Dominicans in History...
...T.W...
...Well, that pretty well expresses the feelings of those assembled to see Mr...
...Only the last of five long acts seemed to fall outside of the unity of the piece and to meander into by-paths that led to anti-climax...
...but far more than drama, a picture of life forces struggling, swaying, despairing, praying...
...Digges plays the part with his usual eye for telling detail and gives us the por- trait of a man whose slippery mind and crafty soul overhang the play like the menace of sin itself...
...He is well known as the author of Selene...
...AMBROSE FARLEY is a translator and teacher of classical poetry...
...and William C. Gordon takes a vacation from the Grenadier Guardsman to play the famous Sergeant of Police whose lament about the lot of the policeman "when constabulary duty's to be done" is something just this side of a classic...
...In the present production, Lynn Fontanne plays this part, and does so with an amazing outpouring of sheer beauty, disclosing a depth of feeling and emotional power which one would barely suspect from her usual high comedy work...
...Edith Walker Cook...
...He is the editor of the Rosary M~rO'~NEUg----""~ PAUr~ING is an American essayist and journalist, residing in Europe.MARGAKET LEE KEY'rlSG contributes poetry and articles to current magazines...
...Francis Vie16-Griflin (1864-I917...
...Richard Henry Wilde (I787-I847...
...Joseph Brennan (18z8-57...
...Ernest Lawford, not quite so well cast as for the Lord Chan- cellor, now assumes the burdens of Major-General Stanley with his multitudinous daughters...
...But in its demands upon the full resources of a powerful actor, Dmitri is a part that few would dare to tackle...
...He has to force it at every moment, and to force it over the hurdle of difficult lines as well as emotions...
...A whole new generation is learning to its amazed delight that this famous partnership actually wrote other and more beautiful operas than Mikado and Pinafore...
...Sta BnTm~M C. A. WISDr-Z, professor of anthropology in Saint Michael's College, Toronto, is the author of Life in Early Britain...
...Excellent though it is, Ryder's book contains no mention of the Yankee poet, George Hill, who not only enjoyed a national reputation as a man of letters, but as a fervent Catholic, and one of the founders of the Church in his native Guilford...
...Eliot P. Ryder (x856-86) "Samuel H. Derbry...
...She plays in a dominant key of cold calculation, far too conscious, one feels, of her own destructive forces...
...COMMUNICATIONS T AMERICAN CATHOLIC POETS Belleville, Ill...
...Born in Guilford in 1796, Hill died in New York City in I871...
...This same quality appeared in the last act of Goat Song, it is true, but never with the same freedom and deep womanly quality as now...
...George Gaul, however, in the part of Ivan--often selected as the star acting part of this version--fails somehow to make this character proportionately interesting...
...Robert Cox Stump...
...Charles J. O'Malley (1857-I9IO...
...This feeling is not confined to those excellent people, the Gilbert and Sullivan fans, who will only come to the theatre when one of the Savoy operas is on the boards...
...John D. Bryant (I8II-77...
...The Wooden Kimono T HE large audiences that are greeting the presentation of The Wooden Kimono show that the childhood of the average man points to the eternal, for a more preposterous agglomeration of melodrama and improbability has rarely been seen in a New York theatre...
...In the tortured Dmitri, Alfred Lunt finds by far his greatest part to date...
...But Copeau has captured just that quality...
...Brother Azarias...
...Two women cross the paths of these brothers, one, Katerina, a proud creature, loving the feeling of self-sacrifice and loving still more the power to hold others by making them humiliate themselves--the kind of woman who will attach herself to a weakling for the special delight of having him come to her again and again for forgive- ness...
...There is hardly an instant of relaxation...
...GLAnYS GRAHAM contributes criticism and essays to American publica-tions...
...William Augustine Newland (I813-r9o1...
...there is a real murder which makes one doubt whether or not, after all, the authors are serious...
...Leo MataguN and Vxot,rr Axa~Ya Sr162 are coutributors of poetry to current magazines~ I'Iaaox.v VXSAL, poet and publisher, is the editor of the poetry magazine, Voice~ ~NNIgTIK SLAVE Ar-r-ING, formerly editor of The Measure, contributes poetry to the magazines...
...Helen Bartlett Bridgman...
...There are many others, either unknown to or ignored by our anthologists, whose claims to recognition should be hand- somely acknowledged in future works of this kind...
...The Chttrch and Science...
...As a whole, this is prob- ably the most absorbing and authentic drama the New York stage has seen this year...
...JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., is the author of The Thirteenth, the Greatest of Centuries...
...There are moments of mute horror in this play, moments like tempered steel, and again moments that rise to the tragic beauty of a moral crucifixion...
...Gzoaos D. Mm~a~ows is an English literary critic, now residing in the United States...
...But this is not the kind of play that can depend on the brilliant work of two or three persons...
...There will soon be a large body of enthusiasts under thirty shedding Gilbert lyrics as freely as they now do the wisdom of Milt Gross or Will Rogers...
...John Howard Payne (I819-91...
...Mary Alice Ires Fondu (I837-97) "Otavia Hensel," the friend of Liszt and Wagner...
...After all, the rather brainless interest of the plot, the un-certainty of everything, the general delirium of the action meet with such response on the part of the audience that one must classify The Wooden Kimono on a par with the pictures of Hairbreadth Harry, and sit in at the discussion whether the production is superhumanly clever or uncannily stupid...
...Rose Hawthorne Lathrop (I857q926) ; George Parsons Lathrop (I851-98) ; Ripley Dunlap Saunders (1856-1915...
...Smerdiakov, in the hands of that master craftsman, Edward G. Robinson, is also an un- forgettable portrait--the servile brain in the diseased body, mounting to a pitch of vengeance against the tyrant to whom he owes his heritage...
...Paul, Minnesota...
...As always, his voice handicaps him...
...Throw such a group together with their passions, their jealousies, their hopes and fears, their terror and hate and their loves, and what will happen ? Drama, of course...
...Ames a re-creative artist for bringing back to them the sheer delight of older days...
...LAwazscz O. WOLF, formerly of the Institute Suprfieur de Philosophie, of Louvaine, is now professor of Thomistlc philosophy in the seminary of St...
...Last season and a goodly part of this one (and still to be seen on Thursday evenings...
...Fenimore Cooper Pomeroy (Stella Maria Woolson...
...but there are so many characters and so many motives that one is confused to find who is the hero and who is the villian even at the final drnouement...
...Reverend Jeremiah W. Cummings (t823-66...
...Alfred W. Moriarty...
...Jedidiah V. Huntington (I824-7I...
...Aliocha is also well taken by Morris Carnov- sky--a character of almost Franciscan simplicity and beauty...
...Sophia May Tuckerman Eckley (1823-74...
...William Henry Cuyler Hosmer (I814-77...
...But he does wonders with it, for he makes it express an amazing range of feeling...
...Blair Fairchild, Paris...
...Reverend Donald X. McLeod (182x-65...
...Annie Chambers Ketchum, who always daimed as her own The Bonny Blue Flag...
...Sister M. Fides Shepperson...
...O the Editor :--Father Daly's word about Irwin Russell reminds me of the world of American Catholic poets un- known to anthologists...
...The audience responded with gusts of laughter to incidents that would have tickled even the small boy home from board- ing-school...
...And that is a fine thing for the theatre...
...CONTRIBUTORS REV...
...298 T H E C O M M O N W E A L January 19, 1997 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER The Brothers Karamazov THE ultimate machinery of the Theatre Guild repertory season was put in motion with the production of Jacques Copeau's dramatization of The Brothers Karamazov--that in- volved and powerful story by Dostoievsky which the Moscow players presented in a different version some years ago...
...Reverend Clarence A. Walworth (I82o-I9oo...
...Lunt comes through this strain as a veritable theatrical giant, perceptive, intuitive, flexible yet staunch...
...In one sense it is a much less difficult part than Maximilian, because its intention is dearer, and it leads through all its chaotic moments to a more definite conclusion...
...and Popes and Science...
...Kunangazi...
...For the rest, there is only one way to catch the peculiar charm of these Ames productions, and that is to see and hear theresa duty cheerfully recommended...
...And speaking of anthologists, how many are aware that in the infant days of the Church in this country appeared George Hill's British Catholic Poets, to be followed in I881 by Eliot Ryder's The Household Library of Catholic Poets (I35o-r88I) in which Americans had their first share of attention...
...Helen Haines...
...Dudley Digges has been entrusted with the colorful if repulsive r61e of the elder Karamazov--the one from whose debauched body and soul sprang the brood of strange brothers...
...Donn Pr~.tt (1819-9I) first to encourage James Whitcomb Riley, whose Donn Pratt of Mac-o-chee ought to be better known...
...Ruth, the piratical maid-of-all-work, is the ex-queen of the fairies, Vera Ross...
...Ellen C. Doran Howarth (I827-99...
...In fact, the only newcomer is Ruth Thomas as Mabel, the most heroic of all General Stanley's daughters...
...James Webb Rogers (1822-96) Princeton, I84I, father of the famous scientist, James Harris Rogers...
...and the editor of A Modern Book of Catholic Verse...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 11
