Plays and Playwrights
Skinner, R. Dana
{This is the second of three general review articles by Mr. Skinner on the 1926-27 theatre season.—The Editors.) ANOTHER American playwright who has leaped into . prominence due to the rousing...
...This was a Theatre Guild production, and had all the advantage of the amazingly fine cast which that organization supplied...
...Arrangements have been made for binding Volume V in leather or cloth...
...Robert Sherwood, the editor of Life, is another good man "gone playwright...
...My objection is not in the least to the general story Mr...
...An essential immaturity of feeling and judgment pervaded it...
...an excellent example of hokum gladly accepted for its entertainment value, and in spite of its sentimentally false values...
...Incidentally, this second play was a collaboration with the author of The Barker—so let the arrows fall where they may...
...He is more interested in environmental forces than in the people they affect—^more interested in emotions than in character...
...The Road to Rome has been busily ringing the cash register for some months, having started off with the violent approval of every sophisticated critic in New York...
...Francis Edwards Faragoh is still another American to make his effective playwriting debut this past season...
...The few important themes of the stage can hardly hope to be dated and modern except in dress, language and the current fashion of the theatre...
...The title page and index for Volume V of The Commomveal are now ready...
...Nicholson has chosen but rather to the critics themselves who have tried to see it as amazingly new simply because the dress is new...
...A rare feat...
...At times the effect becomes laughable...
...Another Behrman play—Love Is Like That—^was far less successful and deserved success far less...
...Aside from a vivid descriptive sense and an ear that obviously reports dialogue correctly, it cannot be said that he showed in this play any arresting promise of distinction...
...Even allowing for this important fact, there seems to be little doubt that Mr...
...Speaking of The Barker—Kenyon Nicholson chose the roving tent life of a near-circus as the locale of some otherwise old-fashioned happenings...
...It retained only his nimble quality of dialogue and lacked the discernment which pervaded The Second Man...
...The play is a speciously clever bit of work which, stripped to its bones, simply preaches that the bored young wife of a pompous old man may seek her amorous pleasures wherever the wind bloweth her...
...This, we are told, is a triumph of the modern point of view as against the old-fashioned hysteria in which heavily wronged stage-wives once indulged...
...I am not saying "old-fashioned" captiously...
...Next week—the stage being a most human institution—vrt shall take a look at the actors and actresses of the past season...
...Her Cardboard Lover is, I think, a case of acting rather than playwriting success...
...in these pages that further summary is needless...
...Of these not the least curious is The Squall, by Jean Bart...
...There is no real art in prostituting words for sensational effect...
...And before we close the chapter, it is worth remembering that Howard Lindsay and Bertrand Robinson have done a most unusual thing—they have written a play which the sophisticated critics like, which the homely every-day audiences cherish, and to which no one could possibly object...
...Pinwheel— staged by the Neighborhood Playhouse with highly modem settings—^ was his most important contribution...
...Another play distinctly in the same class (the critics like to call it "civilized") is The Constant Wife...
...It is one of the few cases I have seen of synthetic success in the theatre— that is, if you call long life with a pulmotor real box-office success...
...One of the dictionaries defines "sophisticated" as "artificially or pretentiously wise...
...Crime is a well-staged and effective melodrama—reviewed so recently...
...His play is really that thing dreaded by all theatrical producers (who imagine they know the public requirements)—a talky-talky play...
...And the name of this play—please note—is Tommy...
...And the pall of artificiality lies heavily over all because of the Shavian attempt to disguise modern satire in ancient dress...
...ANOTHER American playwright who has leaped into . prominence due to the rousing welcome accorded his first produced play, The Second Man, is S. N. Behrman...
...One might summarize The Squall by saying that it works out a good intention in a vulgar way—that is, it takes the moral storm created in a peaceful Spanish household by the arrival of a fascinating gypsy, and goes through the motions of a morality play without neglecting any opportunity to disclose the precise nature of the gypsy's amorous activities...
...Among the plays still running, one notices, in addition to The Constant Wife, The Road to Rome, The Second Man and others mentioned, one or two curious survivals...
...The usual indelicacy of French farce is carried up to a certain point and then aerated for American consumption...
...Well—^The Road to Rome is both...
...Information on binding will be given upon application to the offices of The Commonweal...
...The result is a poor play that titillates on the edge of vulgarity and draws the "pretentiously wise" crowd...
...The chief defect of The Barker is its attempt to gain theatrical effect through the overdone modern method of profanity and uselessly vulgar speech...
...Behrman realizes that if you can only interest people sufficiently in the characters of a play, audiences are glad to watch their fortunes for two hours, even if no murders or big emotional scenes emerge...
...Behrman is one of the most adept writers of dialogue among the native playwrights...
...In it the heroine, discovering that her husband is| unfaithful, demonstrates her "civilized" instinct by deciding to be temporarily and openly unfaithful in return...
...Comment is hardly necessary—except to express a certain wonder that Ethel Barrymore should lend her personal charm and distinction as a comedienne to the task of creating public sympathy for the theme of the play...
...These will be sent upon request...
...Its satire makes great pretense of wisdom without having much...
...Pretty generally battered by the critics, it has managed to drag on week after week with the aid of the cut-rate agencies, and without that avowed and unlimited backing which has kept The Ladder forever alive...
...But there has seldom been a time when the personalities of the stage showed more vivid promise...
...There is still less semblance of art in misusing the name of God to draw^ a crowd...
...It happens, however, that the quality of the talk is so briskly entertaining, the feeling for character so acute and the acid of the author's words so well mixed with charity and understanding, that The Second Man carries one forward with quite as much sweep as the ordinary drama of outward action...
...The play is the work of Somerset Maugham...
...Amazing talent is constantly emerging, and much of it has been wasted on poor shows or through incompetent direction and faulty casting...
...Plays of this sort are far more immoral— in the sense of deliberately beclouding moral standards—than all the so-called "raw meat" dramas and tragedies which generally attract police intervention...
Vol. 6 • July 1927 • No. 11
