The Play
Skinner, Richard Dana
COMMONWEAL THE 20 THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Ladies of the Jury O F omega MRS. of FISKE, Fred Ballard's more presently. new comedy, She but is it the is...
...Reed and her daughter Margaret, alias Maggie...
...The style, vivid and often dramatic, at times makes of the corporate city a veritable personality...
...One hesitates to use the more austere word "standards...
...The rest of the company, while not very stimulating, are quite acceptable...
...The discussion of recent and contemporary events is not, perhaps, as impartial as it seems, for Mr...
...He has not chosen to satirize the feminine touch in the jury room, nor, again, to sentimentalize it...
...It is just unfortunate that at the last curtain, despite many moving scenes, you think, "Well --that's that, and what of it...
...In Craig's Wife, every woman in the audience could detect her neighbor--a slight but important distinction...
...It springs directly from the folk-song instinct...
...The important words of the book are the subtitle, The History of Its Reputation, for it is not a didactic and sequential history but a human-interest story of a city, of high-spot events that have happened from trading-post days to the present, and have given the city a reputation for good or evil--especially for evil...
...Ballard has done more...
...Somehow the circumstances of their lives are too special to give them general value...
...These revivals have a distinct importance...
...True enough, if you measure them by the same standard...
...Civic Whoopee Chicago: The History o[ Its Reputation...
...Satire and rothe music which gives you supreme delight--honestly romantic music which has the great merit of being perfectly adapted to its object...
...BOOKS 2I...
...As to the story--Mrs...
...It is not the music of subjective genius...
...Reed does as finished a bit of acting as you are likely to see today...
...the This seamy with is side crime, important, of vice the groom...
...He has, with a delightfully deft touch, made his jury a real cross-section of American suburbiana...
...The pieces themselves are intrinsically worth hearing again, and add a healthy romanticism to the theatre...
...Part II begins with a really masterly description of the World's Fair, followed by an almost equally impressive recital of the economic depression that ensued...
...There are character sketches of early Chicagoans and eminent Americans, such as Cyrus H. McCormick, George M. Pullman, Carter H. Harrison, the first...
...wrote The Show-Off or Craig's Wife or even Daisy Mayme The story begins with the shrinking of the glacial drift is a matter of some bewilderment...
...In those states and sections where woman suffrage has been permitted its logical conclusion, women serve on juries...
...November 6, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL age in general rests in its admission of such a thing as ideals...
...Mr...
...It is popular and melodious without ever being cheap...
...In the present case, she has surrounded herself with an exceedingly fine cast--another tribute to her understanding of true theatre...
...Fiske is nearly always her own delicious self...
...In a certain sense the theme of Mr...
...Kelly meant the play to apply to all cases of m6salliance and to the inevitable conflict between two strata of culture which must ensue...
...By all the direct evidence, Mrs...
...The play itself deserves some comment unobscured by the light of Mrs...
...Ballard's special skill shows forth in using basic types as definite links in the dramatic structure...
...Lydia Van Gilder shows a mezzo soprano voice of unusual richness...
...rapid diction reaches the last row as clearly as the first...
...He seems to be executing through the region of the present Chicago, discusses briefly a sort of glacial descent from the heights of reportorial drama early explorations, Indian wars, pioneers and the Dearborn to that dull point where thaw begins and slush prevails...
...a woman...
...Crane is in a minority of one to eleven...
...It is a particular pleasure to greet Mr...
...At the Cort Theatre...
...But Mr...
...But although he does state this problem, he does not succeed in making it real...
...In complete innocence of legal technicalities she manages to elicit information which leads her to the conclusion, "not guilty...
...Maggie the Magnificent Maggie the Magnificent is by no means a poor play...
...T sembles HIS book a wholesale in a flamboyant hardware jacket catalogue, and a format is symbolic that reof Chicago's bizarre exterior, concealing a substantial and even serious soul...
...Like Pauline Lord, she absorbs the part to herself--which speaks the great actress rather than the great artist...
...That is what makes the essential difference are apt to become boresome and slow up the dramatic action...
...Aside from the serious dramatists--the O'Neills of this generation and the Ibsens of an earlier one whose work remains constant to the more or less universal problems of mankind, the matter of theatrical entertainmnt goes through just as many minor cycles as the output of publishers or the social temper itself...
...The scathing indictments of Yerkes, Lorimer, Thompson and others, may be deserved, but are not tempered with credit for the civic work these men did in spite of graft and crime...
...But Mrs...
...What gives her preeminence is the absolute certainty of her comedy touch, a perfect sense of timing which opens every inner thought to the audience...
...Then comes the great fire, a world event, splendidly described by Mr...
...Marion Barney as the "common" Mrs...
...The treatment of the notorious race riots and the discussion of corruption in connection with politics since prohibition, seems objective and comprehensive, and yet one feels that the author has failed to get to bed-rock...
...In covered wagon, by boat and by railroad, the immigrant and the native swell the population, so that Chicago soon excels its competitor cities...
...favored Fritzi this year Scheff with has a series already of launched the season at the Casino theatre with Mlle...
...These events are treated with detachment but the workingmen's cause for revolt gets little understanding...
...Fiske...
...Their r61e is purely atmospheric...
...One man, Joseph Stephen Wright, the first 0f the gogetter type, whose name was sunk in obscurity, is brought into the light...
...In this rebirth she suffered violence and conflict between capital and labor, expressing themselves in the Haymarket riot and the Pullman strike...
...G EORGE following KELLY his none is too back satisfactory with us, after Behold, a long the respite Brideprecludes since city's the career, book the and possibility places names its of names emphasis a damage in connections upon suit...
...But the advantage of a romantic November 6, I 9 2 9 be quite what it is today under the guidance of Mrs...
...Perhaps this is due to the fact that Chicago lacks an unselfish and forward-looking newspaper leadership--for when the editors formulate civic policies and commend candidates for office, a careful study will show that they often have a personal ax to grind or a profitable program to promote...
...In the one case they have vitality and point, in the other they mance do not invite or admit of comparisons...
...Gordon appears to have shot and killed her husband...
...At Erlanger's Theatre...
...The rare worth of the Gilbert and Sullivan works lies in their combination of wit and delicious music, so perfectly balanced that you never quite know which has given you the most pleasure...
...Maggie's father is never made real to us in dramatic terms...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Their feeling of deep antagonism cannot be accounted for solely by the fact that the daughter inherits her dead father's finergrained temperament...
...He has written more in the spirit of farce than of comedy, but has succeeded in planting the idea that a woman who starts out by appearing a polite fool may, by jaunty and unscrupulous persistence, end by bringing about justice...
...But in the process of reaching, he creates some uneasiness as to the final pitch...
...How she wages war through two days and two nights, how she captures the prejudice of one juror, the avarice of another, the appetite of another, the pride of a few more, the sentimentality of some others and the quaking fear of the last die-hard forms the subject-matter of two of the most delightful acts imaginable...
...Part I closes with the years in which Chicago rose from her ashes...
...the energy Her to reserve most of one's enthusiasm for the omega section of one's comment...
...They are not really comparable works...
...Roy Cropper does not meet the same standard...
...COMMONWEAL THE 20 THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Ladies of the Jury O F omega MRS...
...Twelve good men and true have given way to twelve good citizens and true, with minor complications resulting when juries are locked up for several days on a murder trial...
...Modiste, and now, for all too brief a time, we have the melodious moments of Naughty Marietta, with little Ilse Marvenga carrying jauntily the heavy singing burden of the title part...
...In the Show-off, everyone in the audience could detect himself and smile at the detection...
...But after all, who cares vastly about production details in the delight of hearing once more, and well sung, Neath the Southern Moon, Italian Street Song, The Dream Melody, and I'm Falling in Love ! (At Jolson's Theatre...
...The collaboration is well-nigh perfect, although Part II is twice as long, and phrased in more eloquent language...
...Ballard's play must be obvious from the title...
...3.5o...
...of FISKE, Fred Ballard's more presently...
...Yvette Gordon, takes it upon herself, with permission of the court, to question many of the winesses direct...
...The importance of the current revivals is thus twofold...
...This musical comedy now at work does more than reasonably well by Naughty Marietta...
...introduction and Part H by Henry Justin Smith...
...Nevertheless it is true that ideals tend to become standards, and that even the thought of carrying out some action in the grand manner tends to lift routine to a higher appreciation...
...The production is not pretentious...
...That it is not quite the same George Kelly who and corruption, in places high and low...
...Ballard has given his play a twist that, for some reason, is unexpected...
...But I doubt seriously if we have on the stage today a greater technician, one who can point the full meaning of a line more clearly...
...Gilbert and Sullivan addicts will probably never admit that Victor Herbert's operettas are entitled to hold place with the Savoy masterpieces...
...new comedy, She but is it the is alpha pleasanter and What of thirty...
...Lewis...
...Smith is managing editor of the Daily News, a paper that nearly always had a stake in Chicago political and economic issues...
...After the Civil War Chicago is still a frontier town, with concomitant vice and virtue, but nevertheless a period of growth...
...Wilton Lackaye once more...
...The romantic spirit finds one of its best expressions in music--and I venture to say that the romance of popular understanding has seldom found a better musical expression than in the limited but refreshing genius of Victor Herbert...
...In so far as technique itself can be called an art, Mrs...
...Once he reaches his high notes, the quality is pleasing...
...He is so vague a shadow that the play never seems to start from him and his unhappy marriage...
...It has brilliancy and sparkle without becoming brash...
...I am quite ready to admit that there have been greater all-around artists--women of the stage who abandon all mannerisms in the effort to sink into the depths of a character...
...But it can never between the dramatic and the atmospheric use of types...
...It is romantic in the robust and not the cloying sense...
...Her step At has sixty-four the spring years of of everlasting age she has youth...
...Miss Marvenga is a capital little actress with a voice of fine range, free and flexible...
...New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company...
...In Victor Herbert's works, on the other hand, it is always and frankly Nauyhty Marietta--Revived N EW Victor YORK Herbert is being revivals...
...The authors interpret but do not pass judgment, and according to the technique of the press, caution Massacre...
...What the grocer and the laundress think, what they dread or desire, and what this and that young man and woman happen to believe in or take pride in definitely shapes the conclusion of the play and the jury's ultimate verdict...
...In fact it is a very much better play than Behold, the Bridegroom--, showing that the author's descent is not an entirely even one...
...Shirley Ward as the daughter is almost too impassive...
...Livingston Baldwin Crane, the last juror to be called in the case of the People against Mrs...
...On the other hand, there are moments when the play comes vividly to life in the terms of conflict, and of the truth that mutual respect begins to grow only when one of the parties to the conflict makes a firm, if seemingly heartless stand...
...For the most part, conditions are reported with accuracy and characters analyzed with impartiality, leaving the reader to make his own deductions...
...But I doubt if there will be many mothers or daughters who will see themselves, or even their near neighbors, in Mrs...
...I feel that any student of expert play-writing could well afford to view Ladies of the Jury from this one angle...
...There will be as much cheap and mawkish romance written as there has been cheap and repellent realism...
...Part I by Lloyd Lewis...
...But that could also be said of several other veterans...
...At the very moment when social observers are talking the loudest about the jazz age, we can fairly well assume that a new romantic age has already started underneath the surface...
...Pride and prejudice cavort about the stage in their many forms and in such a way that they play a definite part in the d6nouement...
...James Cagney as the noaccount son, and Joan Blondell as Etta, his overdressed and hard-boiled young wife, bring back every last ounce of George Kelly's best cartooning power...
...Fiske's incomparable acting...
...It has its own dangers...
...But it lacks both bite and point, as well as the universality which Kelly achieved in his earlier plays...
...Crane develops good reasons for being suspicious of the evidence...
...The ultimate verdict, delivered shortly after sunrise, is one of those strategic triumphs which send you out gloating--quite forgetful of the truly outrageous means used to bring it about[ The play itself is so well written that I am sure it will live long among stock companies of the country...
...In all too many comedies, types are used only by way of character padding...
...Fiske is one of its supreme masters...
...At all events, when the jury retires and takes its i]rst ballot, Mrs...
Vol. 11 • November 1929 • No. 1
