The Play

...Reilly leave after them so little that guarantees their remembrance...

...and not fresh enough to be timely...

...Even the average stock company attempts nothing so ambi- tious as this...

...There is some of what must seem the worst writ- ing of the decade in his new, expansive life of Field...

...Most emphatically, Miss Le Gallienne has ~ opened the way toward a new develop- ment of the technique of showmanship in New York and many opportunities, until now impossible, for the full expression o~ individual talent...

...The more well-intentioned may continue to feel, and with some jus- rice, that Miss Le Gallienne has made one serious mistake in attempting to direct the plays herself in addition to all her other burdens...

...An accomplishment of this sort has a double value...

...The great opportunity came when Melville Stone recruited a staff for the Chicago Morning News...

...That is Mr...

...And yet after you have worked beyond these rather stiff handicaps, you are deep in a truly remarkable and fascinating life history...

...It is not only New York audiences who benefit from it, but the actors themselves...

...She has not only given the plays, but maintained most of them in repertory, changing from night to night, so that even the casual visitor to New York can, within one week, see the best of them...

...but it was, after all, a shy genius who finally retreated, in I895, to a house "provided with all the modern conveniences, including an ample porch and a genial mortgage...

...Perhaps this is the appropriate time to suggest that the large number of people, many of them people of wealth, who spend their energies in criticizing the theatrical trend of the day, could devote their energy and their means to a more useful purpose by making possible still further experiments along the lines indicated by Miss Le Gallienne...

...There are actors in abundance who would welcome the chance to co6perate in such movements...

...Thompson worked carefully during many years...

...It is saved only by the beauty and sincerity of most of its writing (I except the purely theatri- cal blasphemies of the last act) and the amazingly fine acting of Josephine Hutchinson as Madeline Morton...

...But after all such objections have been raised, the fact still remains that Miss Le Gallienne has shown us, in highly acceptable form, and in one season, such plays as Ibsen's Master-Builder and John Gabriel Borkman, Goldoni's La Lo- candiera, Chekhov's Three Sisters, Inheritors by Susan Glaspell, and The Cradle Song by Gregorio and Maria-Martinez Sierra...

...But to balance this, there is a great deal of sheer poetry and an abundance of authentic feeling woven into the play, not to mention its sharp and often scathing social analysis...

...The facsimiles offered would alone tempt almost any honest Amer...

...Inheritors T HE most recent addition to the repertory of the Le Gallienne season is this play by Susan Glaspell, centering on a theme that is perhaps a few years out of date in its external form, but none the less timely in its deeper implications...

...New York: D. Appleton and Company...

...In setting the top price of her performances at a dollar and a half, Miss Le Gallienne has given the final proof of her courage and of her determination to make the theatre once more, in its finest sense, a popular institution...

...She tries to befriend a "conscientious objector" and some Hindu students who, like the first Fejevary, are in rebellion against their own government...

...Concerning other details of Field's personal history, such as his friendship with George W. Cable, one should have liked to know just a little more...

...Felix Fejevary II is trying to obtain state assistance for the college...

...Three Sisters I IS rather late to give an extensive review of this Chekhov T play which has been part of the Le Gallienne repertory for some time...

...Miss Le Gallienne has wisely not reserved these opportunities for herself alone: If Beatrice Terry has had to play the harsh old sister in Borkman, she has also played the wise and kindly Mother Superior in Cradle Song and the high comedy actress in La Locandiera...

...Of course, the captious may point out that Miss Le Gallienne's productions lack the smoothness of longer run plays on Broadway, or that occasionally there crops out a feeling of amateurishness due to the imperative haste with which everything must be done...

...But Silas's granddaughter, Madeline, whose mother was a Feje- vary, is now a student at the college...

...Thu.s the struggle starts between Fejevary and Madeline Morton...

...There is also some apparent ignorance of the fact that American literary history has been moving rather swiftly since the "good old days...

...In it were Horatian echoes, sly whimsy, sentimental verse, deft criticism of manners, subtle hoaxes--a complete repertory of column practices...

...Finally, it is difficult to sympathize with an author who takes the curtain whenever occasion offers, with the sublime grand manner of a Booth conscious of his glory...

...They must have initial capital...

...After a none too striking boyhood and youth he blossoms out---despite a heady genealogical table--into a regular Denver editor and columnist...

...At one-half the price of the majority of Broadway houses, Miss Le Gallienne has given play after play with serious and workmanlike efficiency and, in several instances, with no small artistic triumph...

...One may correctly mistrust a little the aura of hero-worship which prevails, and yet concede that a man as genuine as Field deserved no less...

...In this act, Silas has the dream of a college to be founded on the hill, his gift to the West for what its soil has given him...

...In the end, she goes back to prison rather than give in to her uncle and sacrifice a principle she believes would have been sacred to her Grandfather Morton...

...Its business administrator is none other March 3~, I927 THE COMMONWEAL 583 than Fejevary's son...

...Whatever the financial outcome of its season may be, there are no longer any top-lofty managers to raise their noses about it...

...There he died soon after...

...From his dingy, cluttery room, he fed America with a column which set the standard for similar ventures everywhere and even now remains the most notable example of its kind...

...his son, a weakling of the soil, is already an aging farmer with a monomania for corn...

...But it would be an injustice to omit mention of it altogether...

...Nor has the Guild come so near the heart of the theatre problem for people with modest means...

...The weakness of the play lies in its too obvious effort to teach a lesson by the milestone method...

...Apparently her talent is an inherited one, as her mother, Leona Roberts, has had an outstanding season in the same company...

...There is a vast difference in managerial respon- sibility between putting on one play for a whole week, and at- tempting to shift plays nightly, with all the detail involved of keeping scenery intact, costumes, properties and lighting, not to mention the nightly changes of cast, and the difficulties of keeping each performance up to the best standard...

...Frank W. Reilly, and through his mediumship Father Prout, had upon the great word-magician of the Morning News...

...The Civic Repertory Theatre, housed in the old-fashioned and barnlike structure of the Fourteenth Street Theatre, under the sole guidance and direction of Miss Eva Le Gallienne, has proved itself a success...

...A humorous, toiling and human figure, that grand- mother, who knows what it has meant to fight and conquer the soil...

...One wonders a little, therefore, if he would have written biog- raphy in the same style as that chosen by his brother in the inner workings of Chicago journalism day before yesterday, Mr...

...Thompson speaks authoritatively...

...Unfortunately, it already seems like a distant flame...

...She makes some rash remarks in public, and gets put in jail, at the very time when her uncle is most anxious to avoid this kind of publicity...

...Josephine Hutchinson, joining the company in mid-season, has had at least three r61es of outstanding interest...

...He has been told that to do so, he must ill'st purge the college of radicalism-- make it zoo percent American, and so on...

...In this play, Miss Roberts gives us the interesting Grandmother Morton of the first act...

...Madeline replies, "Is that any reason why we can't have one...

...Inheritors is a play of four generations in the Middle-West, beginning with the pioneers and ending with the girl of today who has recaptured something of the zeal of her ancestors, after the middle generations have almost lost it...

...The Theatre Guild has, of course, gone a long way in the same direction, and likewise with success, but the Guild plays have alternated only from week to week, and to this extent have not followed so completely the repertory system which has been the distinction of European theatres...

...The play is distinctly not a plea for pacificism, but it is a flaming protest against limiting the convictions and speech of those living in a democracy...

...The pioneer generation is represented by Grandmother Morton, who still remembers the days when In- dians clustered about and when she won them by the magic of her cookies...

...And at times, too, the dialogue becomes a trifle rhetorical...

...Opposition makes Madeline almost a fanatic...

...There are too many parallels and coincidences of speech and action...

...58~-THE COMMONWEAL March 30, I927 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Miss Le Galliennds Season B Y THIS time, it is pretty common "knowledge that one thing of outstanding importance has happened in the New York theatre world this winter...

...Thompson's misfortune...

...Nothing dates so distinctly as the "press- box" manner...

...It is a pity, one may say in passing, that men like Dr...

...Her son, Silas Morton, is the one who has brought her labors to frultion--a well-run farm, and acres of property des- tined some day to have great value...

...but often the debts famous people owe them reap what is partial repayment in terms of immortality...

...It is not old enough to be historical...

...Miss Le Gallienne gives it a warm and understanding, if somewhat slow production, in which she herself, Miss Hutchinson, Mary Ward, Beatrice de Neergard, and Paul Leyssac all give un-usually clear characterizations...

...The play is entirely a drama of character, running the gamut from ineffective dream- ers to those preoccupied with life's practical details...

...One thing or another prevents it, but chiefly their own inability to take decided action...

...But such high adventures require economic sinews...

...E UGENE FIELD was primarily a newspaperman...

...but the real compensation was a growing and lasting glory...

...Morton College, founded through the inspiration of a Hungarian revolutionary, is now an institution, a fact...

...The same variety of merry pranks as used to pre- vail in the neighborhood of Mark Twain, and which were probably almost universal in the days before efficiency had triumphed in newspaperdom, budded and blossomed in the Field office...

...An experiment begun quietly and without the usual flare of trumpets has become an institution...

...And the same has been true of the men of the company, in spite of the fact that, as a group, they do not measure up to as high a standard as do the women of the company...

...The story of Three Sisters is little more than the pathetic case of three women in a provincial town of Russia who are always planning and yearning to enlarge their lives by going to Moscow, but who somehow never manage to get there...

...From this point on, the play becomes a bitter indictment of the ioo percenters, those who have lost the idealism of an older generation in the pleasant stodginess of prosperity...

...5.00...

...Slason Thompson...

...It is part of the genius of Chekhov that he can write a whole play, and an absorbing one, about the inaction of people...

...Thompson's book is a mine of valuable, authentic information about the genesis and character of Field's work...

...Miss Hutchinson is exhibiting an ever-increasing range...

...In the first act, we have the sitting-room of the Morton farm- house in I879...

...The human, historical, and literary aspects of the subjects are rich quarries, in which Mr...

...Already she is one of the most important members of the Civic Repertory organization...

...Mr...

...Miss Le Gallienne herself, by way of variety, takes the very minor part of Madeline's aunt--a modest gesture as rare in the theatre as it is refreshing...

...It is only a little over a year since she first impressed us with her characterization of an empty-headed, movie-struck girl in A Man's Man...

...That is because he understands so dearly that action of the mind and soul is quite as rich in drama as the outer action of the body...

...BOOKS Li[e o/Eucene Field, by 8lason Thompson...

...Silas is dead...

...Thompson records affectionately the influence which Dr...

...In championing the cause of the conscientious objector, she runs afoul even of her aunt...

...Thomp- son literally besprinkles his pages with what must seem to the utterly guileless or the relatively blas6 enthusiastic applause of himself...

...The second act brings us to I92o...

...These were also the days of the Tribune Primer, regarding which excellent nonsense Mr...

...And in supplying that capital where it will be wisely used for the production of honest plays lies the opportunity for constructive work by hlgh-minded citizens...

...They are like lovable, self-effacing actors...

...As a sample of the play's method, when this aunt asks, "Haven't we just fought a war for democ- racy...

...There are also plenty of available men of sound experience in theatrical management and business administration...

...Field's services went to the paper at fifty dollars a week...

...The coagulated, mellifluent adjectives of a slightly remote epoch have nothing in common with the hard- fisted feature reporting of today...

...With only two years of schooling, Silas's education has come chiefly through contact with Felix Fejevary, a Hungarian exiled for his political beliefs who has also lost an arm in the service of his adopted country-- a Civil War veteran like Silas himself...

...In days such as these when the best of actors com- plain of the long months during which they must act in only one part, it is a rare and fine thing for the members of Miss Le Gallienne's permanent company to know that every demand has been made upon their versatility and artistry--they have had to play old parts and young, modern parts and costume parts, sympathetic parts and harsh characterizations...