The Play
Skinner, Richard Dana
6io THE COMMONWEAL October 15, 1930 THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER One, Two, Three! THE always competent, sometimes amusing and occasionally penetrating Ferenc Molnar is with us again...
...Gilhooley and the starving girl he picks up on the street...
...What Molnar has really done, of course, is to shoot a quiver full of satirical darts at the Americanized business magnate of central Europe—at the man who surrounds himself with four or five stenographers, an amazing secretary, an emergency legal department, a ready-to-hand executive committee and a large corps of obedient dependents, and with this nucleus imagines himself a Napoleon of business...
...But, quite aside from all the bawdy details and the frequent stinging blasphemies and the generally sordid atmosphere derived from the book itself, the play never quite approaches the tragic depths intended...
...The first of these is described below...
...Real tragedy must have a lyric and singing quality, something which flows from thoughts or persons above the average in range of feeling...
...Miss Gordon can turn apparent awkwardness into grace with more dexterity than any actress on the stage today...
...It gives a brief scene in the office of a producing manager engaged in the job of selecting a few extra chorus girls...
...Gilhooley's kindness is that inspired by softness rather than nobility...
...The girls find him surprisingly unresponsive to their charms...
...The composer of the current piece is also surprised...
...At the Broadhurst Theatre...
...Pathos, sorrow and defeat alone do not give this quality...
...Harris's skilled supervision, and conspicuously from the work of Arthur Sinclair and Helen Hayes...
...Arthur Byron, one of the most accomplished actors on our stage, does everything humanly possible to maintain the lively and farcical tempo of the whole affair, but the story pursues its obvious way with constantly slackening interest...
...The way in which the blushing violet wheedles her way into his sympathy furnishes the ironic touch...
...But everything happens exactly as Nordson plans, allowing us to know the ending at least forty minutes in advance, and placing the whole burden of entertainment on the wit and brilliance of the lines themselves and on the actors...
...These are a few of the elements of real tragedy...
...The Violet THE second part of the Molnar double bill is also in the satirical vein, this time with theatrical managers as the target...
...When the composer is called away for a few minutes, the manager has a chance to talk with her without the usual barrier of office...
...He offers to take the manager's place as interviewer, and in so doing encounters a curious little violet from the provinces...
...At Henry Miller's Theatre...
...Such quality as one can extract from it comes chiefly from the excellent performance of a carefully chosen cast under Mr...
...But only a faint echo of any one of them is to be found in the loveless union of Mr...
...This is the kind of tale that can only be saved by an unexpected twist...
...Molnar is never actually dull, but is often disappointingly mediocre...
...The playlet suffers from the usual artificiality and sophistication into which Molnar falls on the least excuse, but is vastly enlivened by the superlatively competent performance of Ruth Gordon as the violet...
...It is all exactly as absurd as it sounds, but by no means as funny as it might be...
...As Nordson is looking to this girl's father for large-scale financial assistance, and as the said father is due to arrive on the scene within an hour, there is nothing for Nordson to do but convert the taxi driver into a titled gentleman within that space of time...
...With Napoleonic method he marshals his forces, gets the tailor to furnish new clothes and the diplomatic office to give the taxi man a consular post, persuades an impoverished nobleman to adopt the same Anton Schuh as his son, dragoons the executive committee into electing Anton president of the motor works and finally gives Anton the benefit of three minutes of personal coaching in how to appear and act and talk as a man of the world...
...The second, and more important, is called One, Two, Three...
...But in this play, there are moments of impassioned outburst when one feels womanhood superseding girlishness and the strengthened impulses of maturity giving added height and depth to her range...
...Frank B. Elser is the adapter, and the intensely realistic settings are by Jo Mielziner...
...Her range is very limited, but within that range she has achieved a perfection very much her own...
...His love is selfish, even though pathetic with the consciousness of lost youth...
...She has always had charm and subtlety and increasing technical skill...
...Sinclair gives to the character of Gilhooley what faint qualities of honest though stupid manhood it possesses...
...She has lacked, until now, only that driving inner strength which carries an actress to greatness...
...Molnar occasionally tries to save the day for himself by creating rather broad "sophisticated" situations and lines but, as they are purely gratuitous, they do anything but improve the atmosphere...
...A rough and ready taxi driver—so it seems—can be turned into an accomplished gentleman in about one hour, or "like one, two, three...
...One feels now that there is no part too large for her, and that she may soon hold securely the place of our best actress as well as one of our truest artists...
...Mr...
...Of the broadened and deepened quality of Miss Hayes's acting, one might write at great length...
...The particular business man of the play, Nordson, is a motorcar manufacturer with banking interests on the side...
...He is about to start on his vacation when he discovers that the daughter of a similar American magnate, who has been visiting the Nordsons to acquire culture, has upset several apple carts by secretly marrying a local taxi driver...
...THE always competent, sometimes amusing and occasionally penetrating Ferenc Molnar is with us again on Broadway, this time with a double bill, consisting of one short and one long one-act play...
...is by no means a sample of his best work...
...The play contains neither a great love nor a great fidelity...
...This herculean task being fully accomplished within the stated hour, Nordson goes off on his vacation, as planned, happy in his powers of achievement...
...It is the length of the feeling scale which gives tragedy its integrated power and authentic mood, the extent to which ideals fall short of achievement, the depth to which evil can descend in trying to accomplish its end, the degree to which nobility of purpose can be frustrated, the force with which death can, like a crucifixion, come as a symbol of rebirth...
...Gilhooley A RTHUR SINCLAIR, who has so often distinguished -tl- himself in imported Irish plays, and Helen Hayes are the costars in Jed Harris's production of this dramatization of Liam O'Flaherty's novel of the same name...
...If acting, directing and production details could make a good play of O'Flaherty's book, all the materials are at hand...
...At Henry Miller's Theatre...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 24
