The Play
Skinner, R. Dana & Vernon, Grenville
356 THE COMMONWEAL February2, I927 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Sam Abramovitch H ERE is a play, presented by Anne Nichols, which fared rather badly at the hands of the critics; which, in...
...Then we see him visit his professor at the university in the hope of obtaining assistance for himself and his wife...
...His faith remains, and his hope...
...We see him starting up the material ladder in a successful clothing business, and with dreams of success in Wall Street--success always for the single purpose of using his wealth to alleviate the sufferings of others...
...Last year this opera company inaugurated its season by giving Gluck's Orfeo, a work which the Metropolitan Opera Company has inexcusably allowed to fall from its repertory...
...It tells, in seven scenes, the epic of an idealistic Jew, whose wanderings bring him to this land of promise, whose ability brings him success, and whose faith in his God is then tried, like a modem Job, by death, destruction of fortune, and the treachery of friends...
...And yet so admirable was their spirit, so splendidly was the little orches- tra conducted by Macklin Marrow, so sympathetic was the stage direction of Miss Helen Freeman, and so charmingly ap- propriate were the settings of Joseph Mullen, that the per-formance was one long to be remembered...
...But the style of Mozart is essentially aristocratic, and only Miss Chamberlin and Miss Sheridan gave the sense of distinction both in diction and in personal bearing which the opera required...
...It is a play whose symbolism would be quite as dear, in fact much dearer, if treated simply and without pre- tentiousness...
...which, in a measure, deserved this failure, and yet is imbued with a funda- mental sincerity and truthfulness distinctly meriting a counter- current of praise and tribute...
...In this case, Mr...
...Dowd proved equal to all demands...
...The others were less fortunate, and especially in the spoken dialogues their voices destroyed much of the aristocratic atmosphere they should have evoked...
...Moreover, it was a delight to hear Mozart in a theatre the size of the Mayfair...
...Mozart singers are not to be picked up without long search and longer training, and the singers who appeared at the Mayfair Theatre were most of them hardly out of the student period...
...La Finta Giardiniera was written when Mozart was only twenty-one, yet it is veritable Mozart, and had its libretto been comprehensible it might very well have held the stage...
...It would, of course, be too much to say that the Intimate Opera Company gave an entirely adequate performance...
...It was just for such an intimate theatre that the Mozart operas were intended...
...He is ably assisted by Mary Fowler, who takes the part of his young wife and gives her some of the rare beauty of an Old-Testament Ruth...
...and in the singing, Miss Chamberlin, Miss Sheridan, and Mr...
...The play is by Franqois Porche, a Frenchman, and has been adapted into English by Charlton Andrews, and, one fears, none too well adapted...
...A supporting cast of nearly one hun- tired people helps to complete a picture which comes very near to heroic proportions, failing only through the author's and the adapter's lack of perspective and adjustment...
...It is idle to assert that the English language is unfitted for song...
...It suffers in the main from an attempt to be both realistic and allegorical, colloquial and biblical in short, from an incon-gruity between its own elements...
...In a lighter part, which is not without its excellent comedy, Lee Kohlmar brings life, vivacity and no little pathos to the play...
...It may yet find an appreciative audience among those who prefer honesty and beauty of thought to mere theatrical claptrap...
...But his partner goes back on him, escapes with half the finn's funds, leaving Sam to make good personally the losses to clients on a disastrous oil venture...
...One must simply take each scene by itself and listen to the music...
...Fifteen years later, this success is his...
...La Finta Giardiniera I IS not every season which brings to New York the first T performance of an opera by Mozart, yet occasionally such a mason arrives...
...Sam takes his trials erect...
...One arrived a decade ago when the Society of American Singers presented The Impresario to enthusi-astic audiences, and another arrived recently when the Intimate Opera Company gave La Finta Giardiniera at the Mayfair Theatre...
...Sung by artists who know and love their native tongue, it is surely as pleasing to the ear as German or even French...
...The English text by Harrison Dowd was all that could be expected, and it was eminently singable...
...It has a stirring and poignant first act, and many moments in the last two which, if they could only be knitted together, would make distinguished drama...
...The trouble is with the librettists and the singers...
...Then there is the departure from the Dresden station at night, the parting with wife and children, and the hope of what a new world will bring...
...The Intimate Opera Company is an offshoot of the Province- town Players, and it offers one more proof that it is the enthusi- asm of these little-theatre organizations which is most likely to vitalize the American stage of the future...
...Many long passages are ~n blank verse, which only accentuates the biblical character of Sam, and brings a note of unreality, particularly to the scenes in modem New York...
...It is this quality which the organization must insist upon if its artists are to be really satisfying in eighteenth-century opera...
...GRENVILLE VERNON...
...Our first glimpse of Sam Abramovitch is in his Dresden garret...
...After this, we see Sam welcoming his wife a year later at Ellis Island...
...It doses with the promise of a life to be thrice blessed...
...De Cordoba has done in recent years...
...Of the per- formers the most satisfying were Miss Dorothy Chamberlin as Sandrina, and Miss Helen Sheridan as Arminda, though Richard Hale's fine voice as Nardo must also be praised...
...Tiffs opera will be repeated again this year, and once more the Metropolitan ought to hang its head in shame...
...but what actor can hold the credulity of the audience throughout when the author makes him utter a blank-verse speech on almost every occasion...
...At the same moment comes the death of Sam's only son...
...If this handicap is weighed in the balance, Sam is easily one of the best bits of work Mr...
...Whatever the fate of Sam Abramovitch, Miss Nichols deserves considerable credit for devoting a part of the proceeds of Abie's Irish Rose to a presentation of the sincerity and nobility of this one...
...356 THE COMMONWEAL February2, I927 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Sam Abramovitch H ERE is a play, presented by Anne Nichols, which fared rather badly at the hands of the critics...
...The professor, instead of putting his idealistic teach- ings into practice, sends Sam and his wife back to the street...
...It is written in the style of Italian opera buffa, but its story is so extraordinarily complicated that it is useless to attempt to follow it...
...When he sells everything he has, to pay his debts of honor, one feels that a new and still finer life is beginning for him...
...In general his characterization is excellent, sincere and flowing in action, at times finely vigorous...
...The blank verse throws a terrific burden on the shoulders of Pedro de Cordoba, who takes the title rrle...
...Truly, American music has need of just such organizations of semi-amateurs since the professionals are con-tent merely to play safe...
...Hale proved equal in a somewhat lesser degree...
Vol. 5 • February 1927 • No. 13
