The Play

...Perhaps of all the contributing difficulties, the most serious one is the concept of the play...

...Even in plays such as Hamlet, the philosophical content relates wholly to the problems faced by the characters...

...But Frank Conroy merely exposes more fully the hollowness of the discussion periods of the play...

...It has a divided intention...

...Her diction is rounder and softer, her restraint for the most part admirable, and her quiet dominion over some of the closing scenes nothing less than superb...

...That would have robbed the scene of its supense-and thus of its drama-by turning it from a human problem into a two-sided discussion...

...Details of casting and production merely accentuate this underlying defect...

...At the Guild Theatre...

...THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER The Game of Love and Death THE comparative failure of Romain Rolland's play on the French Revolution-one of a series-to stimulate an enthusiastic critical response raises many interesting points...

...I cannot, however, agree with those critics who find Alice Brady's playing of Sophie far below the fine average of her previous work...

...The ordinarily capable hands of the Theatre Guild seem to have fumbled in trying to bring it to full life and illusion...

...The stage must always be essentially a forum for human emotional conflicts, that is, for drama rather than philosophy...

...At such times, when Rolland's intention is no longer divided, when he yields his pen to the pure drama of human emotions, the play leaps to life and becomes luminous and brave and beautiful...

...Carnot tells why, for an ultimate object, he condones the means being used to attain it...

...It is a case of the cumulative effect of many minor inadequacies, in casting, in staging, in translation of the text, in the concept of the play itself and in the kind of material chosen for its dramatic structure...

...Rolland, starting out to interpret the various underlying philosophies of the Revolution, leaves most of his characters in the position of debaters-men and women whose views are already formed and who merely act accordingly...

...Claude Rains as Carnot is another bright and vivid impression...

...If, like Hamlet, they reached their conclusions during the progress of the play, if we were left in deep uncertainty while we watched human beings making momentous decision, then we should have true drama again, and the meaning of the characters' decisions would be caught by the audience itself rather than indicated in all-too-obvious fashion by the author...

...He is too often dull and uninteresting, with very little of that sharp accentuation which made his work in Wings Over Europe distinctive...

...Young Claude Vallee, a proscript taking refuge in Courvoisier's house, and deeply in love with Courvoisier's wife, Sophie, does have to make a decision between accepting a chance for personal freedom and remaining with the woman he loves...

...Such comment, however, really belongs between the covers of a book...

...Nor does he help the dramatic moments as much as he might, either by possible characterization or by incisive attack...

...The very process of his reasoning becomes drama because of the suspense it creates...

...On the other hand, Rolland also had the intention of writing a real drama, and has succeeded measurably in spots...

...Its best moments reach a high pitch of dramatic effectiveness, but the divided intention benumbs it as a whole...

...A thorough and painstaking director would never have permitted such a listless performance as Frank Conroy's nor such unbroken histrionics as Otto Kruger's first-act work...

...Given a moment of real drama, she plays it to the hilt and with rich understanding...

...The fault does not lie wholly in any one direction...

...On his outstanding work all opinions seem to agree...

...In spite of having to struggle with long narrative passages, he might, with a little care, imbue them with enough variety to conceal their barrenness...

...Several of the characters, when we first meet them, have recently changed their views because of some emotional shock or discovery...

...The settings and costumes by Aline Bernstein are excellent and richly atmospheric, with many ironic details, such as the lighting of Voltaire's bust, well worked out...

...The scene which, in other aspects, is replete with drama, suddenly becomes a boresome debate...

...Mamoulian's best talent seems to lie in group arrangements and in the general timing of scenes...

...Very few acceptable plays have ever been written when the authors have set out to prove a thesis or to use the spoken drama as a medium of social analysis...

...Rouben Mamou-lian's direction also has interesting moments, but where it fails most noticeably is in its effect on the actors themselves...

...In this case, it is obviously part of Rolland's intention to make a personal comment on the complex phases of the French Revolution, to interpret, perhaps for the benefit of modern society, the course of such an upheaval as was repeated in our own times in Russia...

...I have in mind a particular scene in the play, during which Carnot, as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, tries to persuade his best friend to accede to the bloody decrees of Robespierre...

...But that moment of real drama when the actual change took place is merely talked about...

...Otto Kruger as Vallee is another who fails to meet possibilities...

...The love of life, before our eyes, becomes stronger than the love of woman...

...He glances at it for a fearful instant as a means of escape from the torture of his situation...

...A few emotional struggles do take place before our eyes, and these form the tense moments of the play...

...With equal precision and certainty, Courvoisier explains why he has reached a contrary decision...

...Few scenes could be more poignant than Sophie's tender pity for Vallee as she discovers his cowardice-few scenes more revealing of the miracle wrought by steadfastness than the last moments together of Sophie and her husband, waiting for the end, and rediscovering the magic of a forgotten love...

...Considering the difficulties of stilted dialogue-due to unhappy translation-and the many moments during which, through no acting fault, drama dissolves into discussion, Miss Brady reaches, in many respects, a higher pitch than ever before...

...And this is but one of many instances of the same procedure during the play...

...Even at that, the play has moments of great beauty with the power to move one deeply and sincerely...

...And Sophie herself makes, within our vision, the momentous decision which at last brings her courage and peace of soul-the decision to remain loyal to her husband, even though she knows it means death for them both...

...Had Shakespeare been seized with a desire to comment on suicide in general, the chances are that he would have had some friend propose suicide to Hamlet who, in turn, would have uttered some ready and pat phrases showing why it was the wrong thing to do...

...Yet the theme if fully developed, is rich with implications of deeper truth and the peace that springs from mighty resolutions firmly taken and bravely carried through...

...Hamlet does not contemplate suicide in the abstract...

...The Game of Love and Death leaves one with the feeling that it might easily have been a great play-that from the emergence of true character under conflict and torture, it might have stirred a spontaneous comment from its audience far more significant than any obvious comment of the author himself...