The Play
Skinner, R, Dana
The Woman of Bronze IT IS not easy to wax eloquent over Margaret Anglin's acting in her revival of The Woman of Bronze when the memories of her magnificent Electra still hover brilliantly in...
...Now all this is written without much subtlety of characterization, the drama being concentrated in a few emotional scenes so dear to the followers of the traditional French theatre...
...The comedy relief is brought in by way of certain overdrawn society characters...
...His gunmen are all trained by constant target practice to "shoot high...
...Miss Anglin's work is replete with a skill that has been quite absent from the work of most of our younger actresses—a skill in pointing dialogue to bring out its utmost wit and charm...
...He is !^e-acquiring a more casual note in his voice which gives more poK"t and strength by contrast to those scenes requiring explosive uxiterance...
...But at the moment when her patience might have won out...
...The Woman of Bronze is not a great play...
...Its values are quite false and artificial throughout...
...It is the charmed gift of the truly great comedienne...
...confession...
...Here we have Oliver Twist back again...
...Now it is played by Chester Morris, and within the ridiculous outlines of the character itself, well done...
...The youngsters, however, are the particular bright spots, with Albert Hackett as the boy and the on and upcoming little Sylvia Sidney as the girl...
...Moreover, in the earlier scenes, she allows her voice to rise and fall in a sort of gentle incantation which charms you for an instant with its beauty but ends by becoming unreal...
...Under these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that Miss Anglin's best efforts are unable to create the full illusion of reality or to stir one to any great pitch of excitement about the fate of all concerned...
...We have all td»9 many good actors being frittered away for the want of expert directors...
...It is not even a fine play...
...This outline, however, does not take account of the excellent theatrical suspense created, of the rather deft type characterization of the various crooks, and of the staging of the jewelry hold-up itself, as seen from Broadway...
...It is just a passably interesting play of the formula type, triangular in its love theme and angular in its execution...
...Laura Hope Crews has it...
...Hunt discovers that Sylvia is to have a child...
...Sylvia Morton is played by Mary Fowler, who ought td be one of our most competent younger actresses...
...But in Miss Anglin's case, it is combined with the real art of emotional expression, and so well combined as to seem but a delightful ornament for the greater power it sets off...
...The last curtain leaves him facing the chair and bidding a paternal farewell to the youngsters...
...To save the youngsters from the chair or life imprisonment, Fenmore gives himself up by signing a complete...
...She is one ittjpre good candidate for a course of sprouts under* Guthrie McClfifttip or under the harsh discipline of Basil Deane...
...So has Ethel Barrymore...
...Experienced newspaper men could tell you in a moment that Crime is just one of those plays that creates an ingrown curiosity and fascination about the very thing it seeks to expose...
...She tries to conceal it from her friends...
...In the last act, twelve months later, the child having died, he returns to seeic forgiveness...
...Hunt falls in love with Sylvia in such a way that his wife soon learns about it...
...It gives the effect of vast knowingness, of many wise thoughts left unsaid, of a gentle irony that finds no other expression than a tilt of the head or a covert glance of the eyes...
...Utterly torn, he offers to go away with her and abandon everything...
...In this particuliK role, however, it is surprising how many good moments she manges to waste by not bringing them into a complete whole and B^' surrounding them with bits of crude over-acting...
...Aside from this...
...Of the rest of the company assembled by Murray Phillips (for this is the third of his revivals at popular prices) this much can be said, that in a comparatively brief rehearsal time, they have managed to work out a pleasingly smooth performance...
...Inspector McGuinness helps to bring the curtain down with an aphorism to the effect that crime never pays...
...Ralph Morgan takes an unimportant juvenile part with hti^ never-failing grace and successful projection of an amusing persflpnality...
...Vivian (Margaret Anglin) resolves to sacrifice everything for the good of her husband's work, and tolerates a situation that slowly becomes unbearable...
...But there is no denying the sheer entertainment value of its hokimi...
...It is a combination of all the Rafiles stories and all the master-mind stories ever written, brought up to date and planted in the heart of New York...
...Leonard Hunt, a sculptor, and his wife Vivian, half-adopt some poor relatives into their childless home, one of them being Sylvia Morton...
...It is the product of intelligence rather than emotion, and amounts to a sort of understanding code between the player and the audience...
...This one scene is about as fine a bit of melodrama as you can hope to see on the current stage...
...The acting, too, is all of a distinctly fine order...
...As Crime, by Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer, seems destined to hold the stage for a good part of the summer, a much belated review may not be out of place...
...The Woman of Bronze IT IS not easy to wax eloquent over Margaret Anglin's acting in her revival of The Woman of Bronze when the memories of her magnificent Electra still hover brilliantly in the air...
...As things will happen in plays, the memorial committee has granted an extension of time...
...This happens at the very time he is engaged in a competition for a war memorial of large importance...
...One Eugene Fenmore is the leader of a gang of gunmen— a leader who relies on his social contacts for obtaining information and on his brains for staging successful hold-ups...
...By itself, it is more artifice than art...
...For Miss Anglin does endow with artistry anything she touches, and if, in one case, we were privileged to see the artistry of flame, it may be worth the experience to see in the other case the artistry of clay...
...James Rennie, until recently, took the part of Fenmore...
...Still, we cannot live always near the foot of Olympus, and perhaps it is good medicine for the soul to have to face the difference between comparative and superlative degrees of art...
...He does, however, draw the line at murder...
...Pt^dro de Cordoba as Leonard Hunt is rather more fluid than usub;^, though without reaching the superlatively fine performance K^e recently gave in the early scenes of Sam Abramovich...
...It makes the "gentleman criminal" a most glamorous creature, and by turning him into an idealist of sorts sets him upon a pedestal which is only heightened by his Sidney Carton act of heroism in, the last scene...
...He gets a hold on two youngsters, Annabelle Porter and Tommy Brown, who are about to be married, and proceeds to use them in his latest scheme to rob a Broadway jeweler in broad daylight...
...The robbery comes off successfully, but one of Fenmore's gang—his rival for leadership—deliberately shoots to kill...
...A rumor is held out that Hunt will now be able to complete his great work and that Vivian will take him back if he proves himself by devotion to his artistic ideal...
...But the transitions are all rather clumsy, and a certain unreality hangs over &\\ the proceedings, as if the characters had never quite breathed the winds of life or experienced the full turmoil of its storms...
...Crime THESE languorous times in the theatre offer a good opportunity to catch up on the crowded days of the season...
Vol. 6 • June 1927 • No. 8
