The Play
Skinner, Richard Dana
THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Stepdaughters of War THIS time, it is Kenyon Nicholson who endeavors to mobilize the anti-war spirit by a play of long-drawn-out depression. Stepdaughters...
...Later, the younger sister is killed in an air raid, Kit's lover is wounded in such a way that he may never hope to have children, and the armistice finds Kit and the wounded Captain Hilder sadly viewing the married life ahead of them, when, as they say, they will be like living ghosts...
...Nicholson's work, he is trying to state a somewhat universal problem, he is stating it in terms that are already known to be a false perspective...
...The material of this wholly delightful show is negligible— using the background of colored troops in the war and a colored troup of Y. W. C. A. girls, who, needless to say, do dress a shade more picturesquely than that venerable warrelief organization would have sponsored...
...It improves upon the ordinary formula only in that curious speed and abandon which the Negro can throw into anything with music...
...There may even have been millions, among all the war-torn nations, who felt that morally or physically they would live only as ghosts among the living...
...To paraphrase a remark that former President Roosevelt once made of another man in public life, the play tells us that there was a great moral crisis, but forgets to tell us what the crisis was...
...Nicholson used better power of selection for his incidents, and not felt too closely bound by Helen Zenna Smith's novel, upon which the play is based, he might have produced a play of rare understanding...
...When they obey him, as they always do, he beams with delight, and his low laughter is as contagious as the perfect rhythm of his toes...
...Had Mr...
...His feet just roll a merry rhythm with superb and gentle mastery...
...If, as one is forced to suppose by the whole tone and temper of Mr...
...We know that just before her leave, one of her companions was killed in an air raid...
...Stepdaughters of War is an attempt to photograph directly the minds and morals and physical surroundings of the British girls of the war generation who served in the volunteer ambulance corps...
...The work of Warren William and of Katherine Alexander shows exceptional integrity...
...Even without music, he can bring across to you the quality of music...
...We are shown very explicitly just what Kit Evans did during her term of service on the Flanders front...
...In case you have never seen him, do not miss this opportunity...
...We know that she arrived back in England for her leave, determined never to return to France, in spite of the horror of her mother and aunts and relatives, who, in their smug patriotism and committee work, could never for an instant conceive of the realities of Flanders...
...The play is one-sided, twisted out of proportion by its stern determination to leave nothing unsaid or unillustrated...
...Her determination was finally broken only by the need of obtaining money to help her younger sister (also on leave) to avoid the consequences of bearing a child by an unknown father...
...Nicholson has failed to provide any such moments, either for his heroine or for the other characters among whom she moves and breathes...
...At the Empire Theatre...
...He has a trick of watching his feet as he dances, as if he were talking to them gently and coaxing them to do the impossible...
...But again, Bill Robinson is all that really matters...
...In many respects, Brown Buddies is merely a Negro reproduction of the standard type of musical comedy, including music and dancing routine...
...But who was the real Kit Evans under this fatalistic mask...
...We know that her nerves sickened at the task of carrying mutilated men night after night...
...It is quite unnecessary to burden an audience with a long prologue, to attempt any direct picture of "before and after...
...But the enormous corrective powers of nature, cleansing both mind and body, left in fact few such derelicts...
...His tap dancing is of the feather variety...
...But in its very effort to show how completely the war could disintegrate the moral standards and judgment of the young, it fails to show just what it was that was broken...
...But after all, there is one reason for seeing Brown Buddies which has nothing to do with the show itself...
...One can judge the extent of a crisis only by its departure from some normal, bewilderment only by its contrast to clear vision...
...The production is staged by Chester Erskine, whose powers as a director are patent at every turn...
...It ends on a question which, undoubtedly, thousands of young men and women asked themselves in the late fall of 1918...
...Brown Buddies AT LAST we have a group of Negro performers giving a musical comedy so much cleaner and livelier than fourfifths of those presented through ordinary Broadway channels that it stands forth as a conspicuous delight...
...But somewhere one should be able to discover revealing lines and situations, sharp as lightning on a night landscape—moments, perhaps, of an older and clearer perception, during which the true inner spirit shines brilliantly...
...At the Liberty Theatre...
...Moreover, one has the distinct feeling that, coming ten years after the events, the play fails to justify its melancholy conclusion...
...He never stamps or clogs loudly...
...I believe this sincerity was mistaken in the choice of material it prompted...
...Miss Alexander knows the art of subtlety and understatement in conveying intense emotion, and her skill has seldom had better chance to reveal itself than in this sadly overstrained play...
...This is said with but one reservation—that someone has still to discover a way of allowing the Negro on the modern stage to present something inherently and unmistakably drawn from his own genius...
...In its attempt at effective realism—effective in the sense of creating a sufficient moral revolt against the futility of all the things sacrificed to war—it includes everything from the popular blasphemous phrases to abortion...
...It is quite obvious that we see her in crisis and moral turmoil...
...A large and carefully selected supporting cast gives able and conscientious assistance, with Olive Reeves-Smith meriting special distinction...
...In spite of all its unpleasant material and its inadequate approach to the real problems raised by war (among which none is greater than the inability of all peoples to see its real futility) Stepdaughters of War has, thanks to its earnest purpose, many strong and stirring moments...
...But the whole meaning of that crisis depends on the underlying character which we never see except through the distortion of the war period itself...
...It is in just such cases that the skill of a fine dramatist is supposed to come into play...
...It is rather different, however, from a few of its predecessors in that a patent sincerity underlies the use of all this material...
...Kit was obliged to turn to her aunt—with the promise that she herself would cease "slacking" and return to the front...
...I am referring, of course, to the musical comedy or review form of entertainment, and not to the many distinguished plays of Negro life already produced, nor to Green Pastures...
...That reason is the superlative artistry of Bill Robinson as a tap dancer...
...We know that, full of the reaction from this horror, she met a lonely officer at Folkstone and gave herself to him, half in pity, half in blind despair of anything having a meaning beyond the immediate moment...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 25
