The Play

...At Hampden's Theatre...

...At the Bottom-which is only one of many titles this play has enjoyed-catches, in amazing fashion, the vagabondage oi the world...

...He tries hard, with gentle humor and infinite patience...

...It is a task of large proportions, executed in a large and sweeping fashion...

...It might easily be a gloomy picture, were it not for the rich variety of characterization with which Gorky illuminates the scene...

...The musical requirements, not very difficult, were excellently met by the freshness and clarity of voice of the girls who took the individual and chorus parts...

...And can one better express their spirit than by using a speech which we hear on the streets today, and associate definitely with Gorky's types...

...In it you have color aplenty, loud, rough humor, cold cynicism, pathos, simplicity, the splendor of futile dreams and-Luka...

...Walter Hampden has done a real service to honest theatre lovers in reviving the play, with modifications, and in giving it the full flavor of a rich staging and sincere acting...

...It takes, above all, those who have descended from higher estate, until, weary and broken, they accept the life of those dismal retreats where a night's lodging can be had for the fruit of a day's begging, sewing or pocket-picking...

...The value of Bulgakov's direction shows in the improved quality of their work...

...First of all, there is the vitality which derives from its central character, one of the most colorful churchmen of what may properly be called modern Europe...

...The sanctuary of Saint Thomas the Apostle's Church, with its high and broad Gothic marble altar, formed a setting both appropriate and lovely...

...But human perversity is too strong for him...

...If one must choose between universality of place and universality of time, is it not better to bring the characters nearer to us through their familiar speech...

...Nor does he even succeed well in converting the lives of those whom he touches...

...On the other hand, he probably felt that France, once supreme on the continent, would be able to effect Christian unity as well as the empire itself...

...The original pattern thus becomes known to present theatre-goers through its many copies, and suffers in the same sense that a model dress from Paris may become commonplace after it has been freely copied by the wholesale dress establishments of New York...

...No one incident or character entirely dominates, but you get the feeling of flowing life in its many crossed currents...

...He is (if we permit him to personify anything) the spirit of men's beliefs and day-dreams -a spirit which often comforts the passing moment but, in its partial unreality, occasionally leads to tragic awakenings...

...The experiment was a bold one, and well worth making, but to analyze its results completely, and demonstrate its shortcomings on other grounds than mere feeling, would require something akin to Mr...

...The Adoration of the Magi SHORN of all extraneous trappings with which a commercial production would have invested it, The Adoration of the Magi, a liturgical musical drama of the thirteenth century presented by the Pius X Choir of the Pius X School of Liturgical Music of the College of the Sacred Heart, City of New York, exemplified the truly devotional celebration of the feast of Christmas...

...But that is no good reason for thinking the less of the original model...

...They call him Grandpa...

...As we now view the results of his work, he probably did great harm to the cause of Christian unity, preferring to consolidate the power of France at the expense of Spain and the empire rather than to seek unity of Christendom by the cooperation of the empire...

...As long as Walter Hampden undertook to have the play revised, it is rather too bad that he did not have the character of Friar Joseph raised to higher proportions, even at the sacrifice of some innocuous low comedy...

...JOHN GILLAND BRUNINI...

...Of the many familiar characters, those best taken in the present version are the page, Francois, by Charles McCarthy, jr., Julie by Ingeborg Torrup and de Mauprat by Ernest Rowan...

...The Bulwer-Lytton play, although written before much of the modern historical research into Richelieu's life, actually preserves this portrait of the Cardinal with fidelity and understanding...

...Nevertheless, one is so accustomed to austerity in translation of similar works that colloquial slang gives at times a bizarre effect rather than the authenticity of mood intended by the translator...

...Not the least interesting part of the task was the new translation and adaptation by William L. Laurence...

...He has overused the all-too-familiar profanity of the current stage and has frequently gone out of his way to select a colloquial rather than a general expression-often with the result of striking a weaker or more transient phrase than necessary...

...Aside from the quite needless profanity, and that part of the slang which is out of keeping with the mood, this production ranks among the best theatrical achievements to be seen on the current stage...

...Anne Seymour and Barbara Bulgakova also contribute stirring moments...

...Modern Europe would not be what it is, were it not for the will and tenacity and intense nationalism of this amazing Cardinal...

...He appears from nowhere in particular, remains a few weeks, and then goes on his way, leaving, in a rich last act, the impress of his thought upon everyone...

...Rowan, in particular, shows a marked improvement over his work of other years with Mr...

...There is also the vitality of good, well-constructed melodrama, and, lastly, there is the vitality of romance unashamed...

...At The Bottom A "NEW American version" of Maxim Gorky's play on the inhabitants of night lodgings for the poor has just reached the American stage through the enterprise of Leo Bulgakov's troupe of cooperative players...

...Its nearest American equivalent is Street Scene...

...It manages to do this without in any way interfering with the dramatic interest of the plot...

...His course of reasoning is quite clear...

...Luka is a pilgrim...

...He has assembled an excellent company, many of them veterans of the old Province-town Theatre, such as Mary Morris, Richard Hale, E. J. Ballantine, Walter Abel and Edgar Stehli...

...There are, of course, many dramatic tricks used in the play which have become a trifle threadbare in these days of mass play production...

...The wisdom of what he has done will probably be a matter of debate for some months to come-for he has deliberately applied American slang (and not all of it of the most recent vintage) to the background of the original text...

...It would be difficult indeed to find any good play of an older order which has not served to a palpable degree as the model for modern and inferior works...

...He has achieved a degree of spontaneous freedom in place of his earlier rather forced theatrics...

...At the Waldorf Theatre...

...Leo Bulgakov's direction is strong, robust and well accented...

...He underscores perhaps a little too heavily, by gesture and expression, those lines in which the Cardinal speaks of his beloved France, robbing them of what should be their simple and downright sincerity...

...Cardinal Richelieu is essentially a modern in the sense that he was one of the first great apostles of nationalism...

...Hampden...

...A curtain drawn before the altar, a star above and two chairs to the right were the only props used by a director who sensed the spirit of the play and realized the value of simplicity...

...Luka is a well-meaning but not very safe guide...

...Bel-loc has made this amply clear both in his life of Richelieu and in his studies of the Reformation...

...The cumulative action of the play is replete with drama...

...The only serious historical distortion is the portrait of Friar Joseph, who is made to appear as a sort of Boswell and modern yes-man combined, whereas, in fact, he was a man of powerful intellect, one of Richelieu's most capable advisers, and a man who, by his independence and firmness of thought, saved the Cardinal from serious errors...

...One could not witness the narrative drama unfold without a deep appreciation of the intense spiritual joy at the Nativity which all Catholics vaguely sense even if many are apt to overlook it in the purely material observance of Christmas...

...Menken's tome on the American language...

...Laurence has erred, I think, more in the extent to which he has carried his theory than in the theory itself...

...At all events, he made his goal national power and dominion, identified himself largely with his goal, and thus stands as a curious combination of egotism and unselfishness, of unlimited ambition and selfless devotion...

...The edification was such, indeed, that one left Saint Thomas's with the wish that The Adoration of the Magi might be repeated in all our churches each Christmas...

...Hampden's best...

...Walter Hampden plays him with great dignity and considerable inner passion, relieved by a pervading ironic humor...

...How can one make these characters universal if one confines their idiom to the day in which Gorky wrote and to the country he described...

...The dominating figure of the play is, of course, the aged Cardinal...

...Is not the spirit of these vagabonds more important than literal adherence to Russian idioms...

...THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Richelieu INSPITE of the sophisticated critics of the daily press, there is still ample vitality in Bulwer-Lytton's play of Richelieu, as retouched and slightly modernized by Arthur Goodrich...

...The closest brief hint one can give of the trouble is to recall that American slang is closely knit to American humor -and that the mood of Gorky's writing is anything but akin to our native reactions...

...Edgar Stehli's Luka is a warm and memorable performance...

...But that is the only flaw in a performance which ranks well up toward Mr...

...Richard Hale, of course, is one of America's real artists, but even he shows enlarged range...

...In pantomime they were even more successful and, with costuming both realistic and rich, their various groupings added a ceremonial pageantry...

...It is much as if, in the production of a mediaeval miracle play, one were to inject incidental music based on Negro spirituals...

...Nor did one hear the old carols, which with Solemn Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament concluded the evening's devotions, without realizing the sweetness, the sanity and the happiness of this mediaeval celebration of the birthday of Our Divine Saviour...

...There is always some discordant fact in life to break the beauty of his song- even as that sad song of the lost souls in the last act is spoiled by tragedy...

...He is not like the Servant in the House...

...There is no suggestion of divinity in Luka...

...For the story is that of the Nativity: the angel's appearance to the shepherds, their visit to Bethlehem, the revelation of the Holy Three-the Babe on the altar, the Mother seated before Him, and Saint Joseph standing to the right-the Magi's visit to Herod, their journey to and adoration in the stable and Herod's rage at their return by another route to their own countries...