The Play
Skinner, Richard Dana
THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Ruth Draper-Dramatist THE incomparable Ruth Draper's New York season has begun. As an objective phenomenon alone it has points of unique interest. Here is a...
...Clifford is a success in business, can it be due to anything else than the complete lifting of every petty detail from his mind...
...No off-stage character in the greatest of plays is more keenly felt and seen than the cramped old man behind those invisible cottage walls-calling, calling...
...Miss Draper's talent happens to be an inherited one...
...The theme is old and threadbare, if you will, but it is in the wealth of small detail and well-chosen irony that Miss Draper succeeds in making it fresh and illuminating, without rancor and with fairness to all...
...The last number is a drama in the O'Neill style-A Miner's Wife...
...Her character sketches, or monologues, are entirely of her own creation, in writing as well as in rendition, the product of her creative faculty applied with the aid of marvelously acute powers of observation...
...Existence has its narrow limits and she has learned to live within them, if not happily, at least with resignation...
...It begins with the opening of a bazaar in an English village by a lady of rank-"not a caricature," as Miss Draper explains...
...Mallory-a woman of no talents save one, the power to flatter and to soothe with sincerity and devotion...
...Its humor is of the obvious variety, but handled with skill and again with that immense resource of observation which makes every point tell...
...Well- you even get a hint that this secretary makes business decisions...
...She escapes to her own porch for a bit of sunshine after days of storm...
...Clifford...
...There is probably less drama in this sketch than in all the others...
...From either viewpoint, the credit to Miss Draper is all the more imposing...
...But you gather still more (and this is the point upon which I would insist) from the drama with which she clothes her characters...
...It don't do him any good-but he likes it...
...Who is this prematurely aged woman who creeps from a gloomy house where she spends her days rubbing the back of a rheumatic husband...
...But the true portraiture and the drama emerge presently, as this lady of a faded era greets the hundred and one characters of the countryside, buys perfectly useless knickknacks at every booth, finds a word of sympathy and understanding for each of her tenants, and at last greets the coachman of the family who helped her pick cherries as a little girl...
...It is called Three Women and Mr...
...It is quite plain that Miss Draper views her work from the vantage point of rich understanding-that kind of understanding which finds pathos behind crudity, or aspiration behind sordidness...
...Although she never put her powers to professional use, those who knew her tell of her ability to hold a roomful of people spellbound...
...Splendid as she is in her acting and interpretation of character, magical as the transformations she effects without make-up, it is as a dramatist that Miss Draper finds the key to her power over audiences...
...The character of Miss Draper's achievement is merely heightened by the knowledge that her entertainment is, in every last detail, a "one-man show...
...Then, abruptly, and with nothing but a shawl to create the transformation, Miss Draper takes you to a porch in a Maine coast village...
...The fact that no musician has ever attempted such a feat is enough indication either of its essential difficulty or else of a profound lack of showmanship in musical matters...
...You will find in her dramatic gift a curious cross between the talents of George Kelly and Eugene O'Neill, softened by a humanity and a tenderness which neither playwright possesses...
...It is the wife who drives out her drunken husband in the early morning-tired unto death of the struggle against poverty and cold and brutal thoughtlessness...
...The cry of despair and remorse-born of a burning and undying love which a moment of just passion had clouded...
...The following comedy sketch, called Doctors, is of a more familiar type-a woman taking three other women to lunch, and finding that all of them, like herself, are on faddist diets...
...She does not complain...
...And this one woman, above all, can yet live and smile in the pride of a son who has earned the confidence of a rich family from the city...
...You are prepared, then, for his visit to Mrs...
...The drama of frustration, bravely accepted...
...At the Comedy Theatre...
...But in the perfection of her powers as a dramatist, we must, I believe, discover that part of Ruth Draper's genius which is peculiarly her own...
...She also has his acute sense of comedy situation and of the humor of incongruous remarks...
...Then there is Mr...
...Ruth Draper thus literally grew into her medium...
...If you would have the full secret of Ruth Draper's hold on an audience, look at her work as drama...
...If Mr...
...The narrow village which is yet a miniature of the world, with its ghastly legends and haunted houses, its hopes and fears...
...Clifford is a little morality-a preachment to wives who, by utter lack of comprehension, let a man find his greatest supports outside of the home...
...She does everything for him: arranges for his charity contributions, tells him whom he should interview, does a hundred small kindnesses for people for which he gets the credit, remembers his wife's birthday for him, buys flowers and presents for her, makes purchases of all sorts for the entire family, from toys to steamer tickets, handles the bootlegger, the head waiters, the theatre ticket agencies, the dentist, the masseur-even manages the diplomatic situation brought about by Mr...
...The words "character sketches" by no means describe it...
...For a brief period you might suspect the accuracy of this statement, when you see the outrageous Queen Mary hat, the feather boa that constantly slips off, the lorgnettes that refuse to sit properly on the bridge of the nose, and when you hear the opening speech read from painful notes...
...Three Women and Mr...
...And you see the source of the legends in his efficient secretary...
...Here is a talented young lady who, without the aid of scenery, make-up or more than a hint of special costume, without orchestra or fellow-artists, gives a complete and well-rounded evening's entertainment lasting the length of an ordinary play...
...It is as if Fritz Kreisler were to give recitals every evening for ten or twelve weeks, playing only his own compositions...
...All else is subservient...
...The finding of her husband's body...
...Clifford is one of the bored rich...
...But there is none of O'Neill's spiritual tangle evident in Miss Draper's sketches, just as there is none of Kelly's harsh resentment of many of the characters he lacerates...
...In some cases, the character most intimately sketched never appears-for it is part of Miss Draper's genius, as critics have remarked for years, that she makes you feel the presence of people she is talking to quite as vividly as the character she herself is impersonating...
...A friend comes to gossip with her-and suddenly the whole village with its crossed currents of life is laid before you...
...The hours of waiting at the pithead...
...This leads, of course, to a general discussion of doctors-the sublimated hypochondria of today and yesterday which makes fortunes for the quacks...
...Her mental kinship to O'Neill shows forth occasionally in a deep feeling for environment, for sultry and passionate devotion and for irony...
...Clifford with his wife, returning in the motor from the theatre...
...Miss Draper has Kelly's uncanny power of observation, both as to details of gesture and speech and as to broad governing motives...
...You gather the repugnance, the astonishment, the love or the devotion which only one kind of person could produce...
...She evokes life and character from the empty air...
...It comes very close to being one of the truest statements on the stage of the tragedy of many lives-of selfish lives at least, with the man a weakling...
...You see him in his office-the master of a number of important business mergers, a man about whom legends have gathered...
...Real beauty shines in her weazened face as she talks of this son-but her brief pleasure is cut short as her house-bound husband calls her back-to begin again the eternal rubbing...
...Clifford's devotion to Mrs...
...She yawns, she flits from one trifle to another, from one ambition to many others, she accuses Mr...
...Mallory...
...Some authors would attempt to make this a sophisticated tale...
...When we come to the precise nature of Miss Draper's entertainment, the objective facts are still amazing...
...It is all quite tragic by implication -and you see Clifford sitting patiently through it all, and know the rebellious workings of his mind underneath...
...She does it, not once (as a violinist might give one annual recital) but evening after evening, establishing a run nearly as long as that of a successful comedy...
...Not so Miss Draper...
...Her mother was similarly gifted...
...Cherries have never been so red and beautiful since that day-the hinted drama of escaped youth and dull middle age, freighted, none the less, with an inner flame of kindliness and wistful yearning...
...By a mere facial movement, she makes you see the person she herself sees...
...The middle section of the program is, in effect, a short three-act play, in which the character of a successful man of affairs is shown to you through the particular attitude of three women -his private secretary, his wife and the woman to whom he turns for "understanding...
...Clifford of never being able to speak her language...
...Each of her sketches is a miniature drama, closely knit, pulsating with suspense, fraught with "situation" -whether it be convulsing comedy or heartrending tragedy...
...Then the accident in the mines...
...But even so, you are permitted to see her view-point-puzzled by the children, annoyed by the cares of a large household, utterly selfish in her preoccupation with her own interests and the "shop" which she runs as a fad-and yet, the product of certain forces and conditions not wholly within her control...
...Miss Draper's program for this year-made up of both new and familiar sketches-is, in its essence, a program of drama...
...She "peoples the empty stage," sometimes with one or two other characters, sometimes with a dozen...
Vol. 11 • January 1930 • No. 10
