The Play
Skinner, R. Dana
468 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Chicago SINCE Chicago, by Maurine Watkins, labels itself "a satirical comedy," and has, as the target of its satire, the screaming tabloids, it cannot be...
...But in a country where less than half the population acknowledge any special religious belief, the theme has its wide-spread appeal...
...The time-worn plea of "I didn't know it was loaded" has never brought a corpse back to life, and surely the lack of malice in Pandora's mischief-making didn't help...
...A play without the saving illumination of art...
...Whereat Liz screams: "I was a murderess the minute I shot my man...
...Roxie's illusion of her own greatness...
...They are people of real feeling, even if simple feeling...
...At first Roxie's husband takes the blame...
...God judged me then...
...Then they remove her as a crazy woman—highly disturbing to the other inmates...
...A last word is due Dorothy Stickney as crazy Liz...
...The theatre is a place for entertainment—but not all of one kind...
...Certainly it is not elevating entertainment...
...The rush to have the trial before her fake is discovered...
...they never make love for the purpose of being laughed at...
...I am one of the G. A. P. I enjoyed Abie...
...It is the kind of play you would expect to see presented in the new expressionist manner, after the fashion of the ill-judged Pinwheel on Grand Street...
...It has all the profanity and sordidness of its subject-matter, undiluted...
...It seems to me I have heard of many an erudite bridge party in the country ending up with a trip to a quick-lunch counter for a hamburger sandwich and coffee, or, lacking the quick-lunch, with a raid on the icebox...
...Eda Heineman overdoes the part of Mary Sunshine, the sobsister, and so loses much of its irony...
...The secondary theme, of young love opposed by parents, has at least the distinguished precedent of Romeo and Juliet...
...Perhaps one could say in fairness that it is not a particularly harmful play...
...The comedy of line is a rather low and obvious form, but quite superior to many pretentious dinner-table witticisms one must sit through...
...Her invitation to the dear jurors to come and see her opening in vaudeville...
...He knows I'm a murderess...
...One admires Shaw the more for holding Pygmalion in one hand and Saint Joan in the other...
...But in that line, the author's intention—for whatever it is worth—jumps into accusing stature...
...A number of quite minor parts are also well taken...
...It lacerates them, one and all...
...Francine Larrimore is completely effective as Roxie, and well supported by Charles Bickford as the tabloid reporter and Edward Ellis as the criminal lawyer...
...A skilful piece of dramatic condensation—yes...
...A swiftly moving panorama of crime and the defeat of justice—yes...
...After being in Atlantic City some five years ago when the world's first performance of Abie's Irish Rose was given, and having, at that time passed right by the theatre where, all unknown, stage history was being born, I have at last, and emphatically, seen this play, this Jewish and Irish comedy by which, for generations to come, managers will measure the mind of the great American public—the sadly maligned G. A. P. And now comes the confession—a final breach of faith, perhaps, with all the art theatres and theatrical highbrows of this illustrious town, but none the less a true confession...
...It opens the back-stage rehearsals of criminal trials, exposes the obvious lies the public swallows simply because they are coated with the magic of print, and leaves to a crazy woman the only sane utterance in the play...
...Arrangements have been made for binding volume IV in leather or cloth...
...From this point on, her spirits revive, and we begin in the subsequent scenes in jail and court to see the manufacture of a national heroine by the tabloid newspapers, the interviews with the sob-sisters, the letters and gifts from admirers, the stage management of a famous criminal lawyer, the intervals of frantic boredom when other and more recent criminals get the front page pending Roxie's trial...
...The trial...
...You may not agree with its main theme, that religious belief is mere sectarianism and plays little or no part as a foundation for married happiness...
...We can accept that as a fact without agreeing with it in our hearts...
...Above all, Abie stands for sincere playwriting in that the author does not reside in Olympian heights above her characters...
...A reporter tells the frightened moron that this is the chance of her life to gain first-page publicity, that no Chicago jury ever hanged a woman, and that she will be nationally famous overnight...
...Action never lags...
...One prisoner has just announced the doctrine that no one is guilty of murder until convicted...
...A play that might, granted the odd twists of the public mind, give caste to the very thing it sets out to destroy...
...A useful play—hardly...
...If Ibsen plays are all in one mould, perhaps it is because Ibsen was less of a genius than his worshippers believe...
...So, in allowing the best of intentions to Chicago, it is still permissible to ask if a play whose satire points out only the painfully obvious, serves any broad purpose as a counter to its inherent vulgarity and sordidness...
...Disagreed with it, but enjoyed it thoroughly, laughed just where I was expected to laugh, swallowed hard when everyone around me was doing the same thing, met the sedate vice-president of a big bank between acts and found he was keeping me company, sat through to the last minute and was perfectly content that I had paid for 469 my seat and had never thought to ask for "press courtesies...
...Information on binding will be given upon application to the offices of The Commonweal...
...It makes no plea for any of its characters...
...But Sam Harris, the producer, and the indefatigable George Abbott, the director, have given it to us straight, with all the trappings of realism...
...Perhaps the G. A. P. knows its Aristotle after all...
...Impeccable in slatternly make-up, this young actress gives the one genuinely interesting character of the play its full measure of poignancy and purpose...
...On the other hand, if the dear public is not already initiated into such matters, then its stupidity is so dense that not a hundred Chicagoes would make it any wiser...
...The well-intentioned idiot, like the intentionally honest business man who perpetually fools himself, are preeminent examples of intentions that matter only before God and leave mankind to judge only by the dire results...
...If I may be allowed a further word of justification, personal and also in behalf of the G. A. P., is it quite fair to say that Abie is a cheap and vulgar show simply because it demands little mental effort from the audience...
...Roxie's acquittal...
...The real question is whether, after constant daily mud baths from the metropolitan scandal sheets, it is necessary or useful or illuminating or particularly constructive to spend two hours in the theatre watching the same process repeated...
...If we must lament with Hamlet, we must also tap the ale with Falstaff, or leap from Phedre to Scapin...
...Rehearsals of the trial itself...
...It is reminiscent of Broadway, but neither as interesting a play as the latter nor as well cast...
...The situations may be laughable, but rarelj the people in them...
...And ever since, in that naive way we have of making excuses for ourselves, I have been looking about for evidence that the G. A. P. is not so unsound, after all, in its silent judgment on plays...
...In the first place, Abie meets all the requirements of Aristotle and Professor Baker as to theme, plot, structure, and characterization...
...Then the mythical story that Roxie is to have a baby...
...It is a racy study in absurdities, prompting laughter or disgust, but never false sympathy...
...And if the Cohans seem to be lifted from the comic strip and disprove what I have said, remember that Abie and Rosemary are glad enough to see them on a lonely Christmas eve...
...468 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Chicago SINCE Chicago, by Maurine Watkins, labels itself "a satirical comedy," and has, as the target of its satire, the screaming tabloids, it cannot be appraised by quite the same standards as if an author had set out to tell a sordid story for its own sake...
...It uses to the nth degree the modern freedom of theatrical speech, and ends up by giving the feeling less of high satire than of crass and all too faithful realism...
...The title page and index for volume IV of The Commonweal will be sent to subscribers upon request...
...It was the same genius who wrote Macbeth and Twelfth Night...
...The story is of Roxie Hart, who shoots her admirer because he has grown tired of her...
...Then the truth comes out...
...The final irony of a new murder in the court-house itself, with everyone rushing off to catch the new sensation, and leaving Roxie almost alone...
...This, too, following an elaborate dinner in the early evening served to an epicure's taste...
...After all, the theatre is there to draw entertainment from life—not merely from one plane of life, but from anything that is true and sincere, tragic or amusing, riotous or reverent, tender or exuberant...
...Abie and the G. A. P. FOR a moment we must get personal...
...It opens the ulcers of false sentimentality with a merciless knife and indicts the American public mightily for its foolishness in making overnight heroes of criminals and in demanding the filthy fare which the tabloids have become so expert at serving...
...Of course, intentions are remote things to estimate at best, secondary in importance in any case, and apt always to confuse an issue...
...They never cry for the amusement of the audience...
...In a work of this kind, we must grant the author a sincerity of intention which, under other circumstances, we might well doubt...
...The return of the crowd to see a flashlight taken of Roxie, the exmurderess, arm in arm with machine-gun Jennie, the ascendent heroine of tomorrow...
...Its strokes are too broad, too entirely in the realm of burlesque to make it emotionally stirring...
...It is Liz who gives us the one sane line mentioned above...
...Her jealousy of sister criminals...
...Her wardrobe for the trial...
...It makes no attempt at serious character analysis, never transcending obvious types...
...Characterization becomes quite individual—only occasionally relying on type...
...But Juliette Crosby, as a rival to Roxie's fame, tries quite unsuccessfully to be tough, and Edith Fitzgerald as a gun-woman is far from convincing...
...She is obviously fond of them...
...The plot has constant suspense...
...One might grow gloomy over the G. A. P., particularly the New York G. A. P., were it not for the fact that Abie's fifth season also celebrates the second year of The Dybbuk, the emergence of Caponsacchi, the astounding success of Cradle Song, a promised revival of The Wild Duck, and the prompt failure of some twenty or more plays which did not have what the maligned Abie has—theme, plot, structure, characterization, honest feeling, and broad humor...
Vol. 5 • March 1927 • No. 17
