The Play
Skinner, Richard Dana
THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Shakespeare a la Mode THAT new play-producing group known as the New York Theatre Assembly has had a rather unfortunate time in trying what might have proved an...
...The Duke of Vienna delegates all his authority for a short period to a hard-shelled reformer, one Angelo...
...I cannot, for the life of me, see how it can be considered a great play...
...If a modern playwright were to split his moods this way, he would be roundly trounced by the critics as lacking technique...
...He then goes a step farther in modernity by doing an Elmer Gantry-that is, trying to commit himself the very crime for which he is about to hang a certain young man...
...He even loses his difficult accent-an impediment for which there seems to be no excuse whatever...
...Unquestionably this play is a test for actors, and Miss Le Gallienne has drawn generously-if not always successfully- on her resources...
...The prevailing effect is that of improbability, heightened, if anything, by the modern settings and costumes...
...But Reinhardt, with his tricks of darkened stage and overhead lighting, manages to inject an atmosphere which has life and meaning on its own account-something which seems to support and conspire with the players until the illusion becomes almost terrifying...
...Wheaton in this awkward comedy by Earle Crooker and Lowell Brentano...
...It is hard to say just how audiences might greet this work if stripped of their Shakespeare inhibitions...
...is not intended to be 'trick' but rather a welcome means of enhancing the vitality of a great play which is curiously apt to the present day...
...Perhaps it was feared that some unhappy critic entering into the "glow, the zest and the passions" of the occasion, might fail to detect the real author, and thus send an enduring laugh down the ages...
...Rather than seek for unprejudiced opinions from our own day, we might look back to the comments of Dr...
...The Theatre Assembly seems to feel that Measure for Measure has seldom been given because of the prudery of audiences, who resent frank mention of the professional sinner and her trade and associates...
...Once remove this inhibition and all will enter into the glow, the zest and the passions of characters more vigorous than those in the majority of plays presented on the stage today...
...There is no unity of mood-the same situations being treated in one scene as stinging farce and satire, and in another as full of tragic seriousness...
...Elmer Gantry failed dismally as a play for very much this same reason...
...But in the generation that used a blue pencil more frequently than our own, there would have been but small difficulty in adapting the piece for current tastes if it had been solidly worth the adapting...
...At any rate, the all-powerful press had its way, the little jest was spoiled in the making, and save for the new title and the modern dress, Measure for Measure went on the boards with due printed credit to William Shakespeare...
...The character of Victor Karenin is always a bore...
...It has-if you remember the play at all -one point of reasonably modern significance...
...Johnson...
...Aside from Ben Ami, the most satisfactory members of the large cast are Miss Le Gallienne herself in a delightful bit as Karenin's mother, Alma Kruger as Lisa's mother and Egon Brecher as Ivan...
...Family Affairs BILLIE BURKE was utterly and persuasively charming as the troubled Mrs...
...Nor, after the mysterious depths of Reinhardt lighting, is it altogether pleasing to have brilliantly lighted and quite realistic settings-even though they are done by that eminent artist, Aline Bernstein...
...Yet-if we are to do the inhuman thing and try to be unprejudiced--there is ample justification for the general concept of Miss Le Gallienne's production...
...Tragic and emotional scenes-even when broken by permissible comedy-must be built up to with adequate motivations...
...Audiences of today grow restive at plots too scantily motivated, at situations obviously invented as stage tricks, at confusion of moods and purpose...
...It is a play with fine scenes-one or two of them intensely dramatic -but not a fine play...
...Hugh Miller as Lucio adds another brilliant characterization to his long list...
...This I rather doubt...
...That part of the experiment which involves the modern dress is far more successful than the Liveright version of Hamlet...
...It is a rather heroic thing for Miss Le Gallienne to attempt so soon after the memorable performances given by Reinhardt with Moissi in the leading role...
...Leonard Mudie as Claudio and Leo G. Carroll as Angelo are both more than competent, though Mudie carries more conviction...
...Masha, too, the gypsy, should be a picture of wild beauty and deep understanding-otherwise how can we understand Fedya's reverence for her and the idealistic pinnacle upon which he places her...
...The rest of the plot, however, is quite in line with Shakespeare's worst-which can be quite bad...
...Miss Katzin, in her direction, has managed to make modern dress sustain the feeling of a given time and place...
...Yet the suggestion will, I believe, stand the test of experience...
...The Living Corpse TOLSTOY'S Living Corpse-more elegantly retitled Redemption as a one-time vehicle for John Barrymore- has come to renewed life on the stage of Miss Le Gallienne's Fourteenth Street theatre...
...Jacob Ben Ami is the Fedya...
...The light or comic part," he writes, "is very natural and pleasing...
...The result is not always happy...
...THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Shakespeare a la Mode THAT new play-producing group known as the New York Theatre Assembly has had a rather unfortunate time in trying what might have proved an excellent test of New York audiences...
...The present production of Measure for Measure...
...He has been acting in English for many years now-too many to make further allowances necessary...
...Anne Shoemaker as the unhappy Isabella battles bravely to maintain the illusion of real tragic import against the shortcomings of the plot...
...At the Civic Repertory Theatre...
...Certainly the present production emphasizes by much special stage business all the material in question, to the point, one might say, of inviting the publicity of censorship...
...She has been at such pains in this respect that almost every cene which Reinhardt throws to the right of the stage Miss Le Gallienne throws to the left...
...Rita Romilly is too hard and obvious...
...Judged entirely by itself, it is a competent, well-ordered piece of work, lacking brilliancy, but shot through with sincere power...
...Not that Moissi's dulcet mannerisms set any unapproachable standard...
...The staging of the gypsy chorus scene is stiff and without glamour-although so much of the mood of the play and of Fedya's character depends on this scene...
...but the grave scenes, if a few passages be excepted, have more labor than elegance...
...This man proceeds to resurrect all the obsolete blue laws of the city and to enforce them with merciless rigor...
...Her work is always appealing, but she does not seem to have very deep reserves when it comes to highly emotional scenes...
...Then the dark secret slipped out, and the theatrical newspaper world (that part, at least, devoid of humor) rose in wrath at the very thought of the attempted deception...
...The play was to have been given anonymously, in the thought that an unprejudiced approach to Shakespeare might take off a bit of the chill generated in the popular mind by his august name...
...On the side of staging and production, Miss Le Gallienne has overcarefully avoided the least suggestion of Reinhardt...
...All went well during the early rehearsal...
...The Liveright Hamlet was never more than a Long Island garden party...
...Rather weak and labored in the early scenes, he gradually assumes a greater artistic stature, and by the last third of the play gives a portrait of far more genuine feeling than Moissi's...
...The idea-a wife's attempt to reform her family by bringing together her husband's mistress, her son's mistress, her daughter's fiance, and a pretended lover of her own-is merely a stupid attempt at sophistication which never passes beyond the point of being infantile...
...The group's program note has this to say: "In this imperfect world, the name of Shakespeare is not an 'attraction' to theatregoers at large...
...They cannot be dumped abruptly into your lap...
...Josephine Hutchinson is the Lisa...
...Unless one of his plays carries with it the name of a great star, the public, when invited to see a classic, develops a feeling of instinctive withdrawal and acute mental paralysis...
...It is not Shakespeare as Shakespeare that gives them "acute mental paralysis," but some portions of Shakespeare in the pitiless light of modern stage conventions...
...But he should have at least the maturity and the pained (almost painful) sincerity which make us understand Lisa's attraction to him...
...Beyond that, there is little to be said...
...It was, however, the intention of the group to omit the original title, as well as the author's name, and to substitute, as a blind, the title of The Novice and the Duke...
...She lacks the truly tragic note- a note upon which Tolstoy depends utterly for his second-act climax...
...It is even rumored that some of the actors called in to try out for parts went solemnly through the ordeal without in the least suspecting that they were quoting immortal Shakespeare...
...Those who venerate Shakespeare regardless of what he does or says may think it pure impertinence to suggest that only the best of his plays deserve revival-and that the balance may best be enjoyed in the library, where they can be read as sheer poetry and philosophy...
...Donald Cameron is unequal to this part and is never much more than a young man in a middle-aged man's make-up and beard...
...The satirical mood of one scene did not blend with the supposed seriousness of another...
...He either has no musical ear for English intonations or else lacks the impulse to perfect his diction as he should...
...He is an artist who deserves a very broad field for his intelligent, sharply finished and persuasive work...
...Edgar Bohlman has done some very interesting settings for this modern version, and the adapter, Olga Katzin, has, in her direction, brought the last ounce of vitality out of such scenes as the one in which Claudio is unable to face death, even with his sister's honor at stake...
...Someone in the group conceived the interesting idea of presenting Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in modern dress without, as it were, benefit of author...
...He is everything that Fedya is not...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 8
