The Play

...We go through all the expected scenes of snobbishness on the part of the wealthy New Yorkers, of easy democracy on the part of the prince, of sentimental reminiscence on the part of the several Russians whenever they are alone—all without the deft touches which would give the characters, as individuals, the importance which they lack as mere types...

...George has a conscience about it, Olivia none...

...Lucille Watson as Cassandra's aunt, for example, plays for farce, directing her best lines straight at the audience...

...Dudley Digges directed the Behrman-Nicholson play, but without the welding magic that so often characterizes his best work...

...The man he met was not named Tellworthy at all—no, quite another name...

...Many years later, the son, wishing to avenge his mother's fate, returns under an assumed name to act as his father's confidential secretary and betray him to his financial enemies...

...Miss Kathryn Kohler in a minor role contributes the best acting...

...Pim remembers to add that Tellworthy perished trying to swallow a herring bone...

...It is one of the deepest human instincts to admire sacrifice when it springs from high duty...

...As it stands, the play is full of Wall Street chatter, full of abundant satire, but empty of all semblance of persuasive char721 acterization...

...Cassandra Hopper admires Prince Dubriski, and knows the sincerity of his love for her, but she simply loves someone else more...

...Everyone, for example, is moderately familiar with the bootlegger-hijacker background of the play Broadway...

...The Neighborhood Playhouse (will anyone ever forget The Dybbuk, or the best of the Grand Street Follies, or any of a dozen entrancing things that have emerged from this place...

...Add to this the determination of its directors to keep prices far below the Broadway standard, and it is easy to see why a theatre miles away from the theatrical centre cannot operate without a perpetual annual deficit...

...He would be sheer caricature...

...But, if so, he should have studied Galsworthy's methods more closely...

...Rosenberg intended to create an American Heythorp...

...For the moment, I cannot recall any other play with a similar character, and yet, to read the reviews, one would think this was about the tenth play of its kind this season...

...The play suffers singularly from characters that are both overdrawn and underwritten...

...But Galsworthy has filled in the outline with such master-strokes of detail that Heythorp becomes an individual in his own right, obeying no law of type, but challenging any denial of his existence...

...Here and there good bits of acting emerge, recalling Mr...

...Its straw men bump around the stage uttering parrot phrases, striking heroic or villainous attitudes, without even the one genius of caricature—resemblance to original type...

...Ann Davis, so excellent when playing opposite Southern in Accused, repeats the interesting quality of her earlier work, but with a realism bordering on the tragic mood...

...The plot itself fails to contribute much...

...Then the son practically forces his father's retirement, proceeds to wreck the firm by "bucketing," and in the last scene throws himself out of the window while the prematurely decrepit father offers to make good all losses, thus proving himself, we suppose, a proud and good old sport in spite of everything...

...But the ending of Love Is Like That lacks the mainspring of a simple fine motive...

...and underwritten because their motivations are not thoroughly enough handled to make them convincing even as unusual individuals...

...The total result is entertaining only in spots...

...The comedy, if you remember, hinges on the chance remark of Mr...

...The one unexpected touch, the failure of the prince to win the love of the young American heiress, and the last curtain, which leaves him facing a strange world alone, give the play its only real distinction, and even here the force of drama is lacking in a curious way...

...Right here, then, we have three distinct methods crowded into one slightly thin play, with Barbara Bulgakov adding a touch of romantic fervor as a Russian dancer...

...Instead of writing a life history in brief episodes, he should have condensed the summary actions of a life in scene* long and complete enough to lend reality to John Perry...

...Pim—an old codger just "passing by" with a letter of introduction—to the effect that he has just seen Jacob Tellworthy, first and convict husband of Olivia Marden, still alive...

...All of which proves an interesting point, that a situation familiar to most playgoers seldom makes good theatrical material unless it enjoys sensational or melodramatic qualities as well...

...Its auditorium is so small that even when it has so astonishing a success as The Dybbuk to its credit, the revenue from the occasional success cannot replace the deficit piled up by the less popular productions...

...Against the age-old heresy of the happy ending, it is quite safe to say that audiences respond instantly to themes of sacrifice or tragedy where the motive is important enough...

...Behrman's unfailingly good dialogue which, even in the most languid passages of this play, tingles with life and a certain blunt epigrammatic truth...

...When he makes his first quarter of a million and refuses to stop there, she packs up and leaves him, taking his son with her, and disappears...

...To be more exact, it is not handled in a way to reflect fresh interest on its main character, either by way of melodrama or strongly individual characterization, and this sheds the initial gloom of familiarity over a theme that, in actual fact, is fairly new for the theatre...

...This helps...

...Overdrawn because they are not true to any recognizable types...

...In the past, this deficit has been met largely by the Misses Alice and Irene Lewisohn, who have given unstintingly, not only of their money, but of their time and energy to this admirable project...

...In Old English, to illustrate, Galsworthy has drawn anything but a type character in Heythorp...

...Basil Rathbone as the prince is, until that last curtain, the impeccable gentleman of high comedy...

...Cleon Throckmorton's revolving settings are interesting, but more as a stunt than as a serious contribution...

...They have now come to life again with an episodic play by James N. Rosenberg, depicting the rise and fall of a not quite believable figure in Wall Street...

...Pirn Passes By BY REVIVING one of its older plays, the Theatre Guild adds just that much more to the repertory idea...

...Goodman's workmanlike ability in keeping all his actors to one mood, but the general pace demanded by the text is too rapid to permit minor refinements of business, and the dialogue itself is too crude to permit sustained impressions...

...The old man would never be believable in mere outline...

...Quite Shavian...

...720 THE PLAY By R. DANA SKINNER Love Is Like That SWIFT on the heels of The Second Man comes S. N. Behrman's second produced play, this time, however, the result of a collaboration with Kenyon Nicholson...

...The Demise of the Neighborhood THE most interesting theatre in New York is about to close, after an unexampled record of twelve years of original and stimulating work...

...This apparently makes George and Olivia bigamists...

...And there you are...

...finds itself face to face with a wellknown law of theatre economics...

...After an unmasking, there is a temporary reconciliation...

...But in that theme you have plenty of old-fashioned melodrama...

...Pim has another stroke of memory...

...It is understood that they are contemplating, later on, the opening of a similar theatre in a better location and without the inherent handicaps of this one...

...Milne thereupon makes George seem ridiculous...

...This tenuous comedy by A. A. Milne was first presented by the Guild some years ago with Laura Hope Crews and Erskine Sanford in the leading roles...

...Perhaps that is a fair judgment as far it goes, but something more is needed in the way of a tribute to Mr...

...In the present case, New Yorkers have either seen or heard about so many noble Russian exiles that the theme gives the illusion of being trite...

...Possibly Mr...

...They again play the same parts in revival, to the complete delight, be it said, of any lover of high comedy...

...But Olivia makes George propose all over again, and otherwise blackmails him into consenting to his daughter's marriage to a young artist...

...Every theatre lover in New York will wish them the success they deserve in this newer enterprise...

...The scenes shift on an ingenious revolving stage with fatal rapidity, crashing through decades and decorum alike, and failing in the aggregate to give any sense of reality either of mood or background...

...Then Mr...

...But we find it in the greatest tragedies as well as in many of the finest comedies, and no matter by what name we call it, it is the happiness of a great deed bravely done that sends us out aglow with the joy that is common to tears as well as laughter...

...As a "modern romantic comedy," the play suffers from the current public attitude toward its theme—the adventures of a penniless Russian prince among the newly rich of New York...

...The parts are individually well done, but are often in different keys...

...Wall Street THE Stagers, with Edward Goodman as director-inchief, have been inactive during the first two-thirds of the present season, failing, apparently, to get that measure of endowment support on which art theatres rely and which their own sincere efforts quite richly deserved...

...With matters at a crisis, Mr...

...If she had loved him, and he had given her up for some reason compelling to his own standard—shall we say because of some other obligation in his life which must be met first?—then that final curtain would have colored pathos with heroism, to the assured delight of the average audience...

...The general impression seems to be that Love Is Like That measures up in no way to the standard of The Second Man...

...Dudley Digges, as the befuddled husband, gives one of those performances so replete with masterly business that you are quite as much captivated by his silences as by his rotund speech...

...Quite distorted...

...In the truest, but far from accepted sense, that a happy ending implies some great moral or spiritual achievement, we all like that kind of a curtain...

...John H. Perry starts as a devoted young father in a small Massachusetts town, afflicted with a wife whose fear of the great city is so overwhelming that she makes him promise if he ever reaches moderate success in New York to return at once to Nelsonville...

...In popular literature, for example, take the endings of the Prisoner of Zenda or of the Tale of Two Cities...