The Play and Screen
Skinner, Richard Dana
672 THE COMMONWEAL October 29, 1930 THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Twelfth Night ON THREE separate occasions recently, we have had the joyous intimation that Shakespeare...
...Following the Pagliacci theme, there is a play within the play, resulting in the murder of an aristocrat at the very moment that news of the capture of the Bastille is brought in by an excited mob...
...Also, it may be remarked that Willie Howard emerges every now and then at his best as a versatile comedian...
...Joyce Carey maintains both the lyric quality and necessary petulance of Olivia...
...Walter Kingsford carries on the full traditions of Sir Henry Tree in making Sir Toby Belch a lower-scale replica of Falstaff...
...It sets its own plan of illusion and thus makes the fantastical plot appear both plausible and delightful...
...He is the summation of the jazz age, with all its self-conscious blueness, and its strident display of physical energy, covering up something quite mysterious which may germinate unexpectedly—something which seems to include the search of disillusioned youth for some new illusions by which it may hope to live...
...But it may be furnishing materials upon which new forces can work...
...In the women's parts, Miss Jessie Ralph is a thoroughly credible Maria, a character witty, buxom and bouncing...
...A moment later, Feste, the clown, appears and opens the cover of the book, displaying the title page of Shakespeare's comedy...
...As Shakespeare wrote equally well for kings and clowns and heroines, and even for grave-diggers, the effect of uneven performances is bound to be incongruous...
...Leon Quartermaine brings the true depths of pathos to his interpretation of Malvolio...
...But when all is said and done, it is, of course, Jane Cowl herself who supplies the ultimate note of beauty...
...She even discards many of her favorite and harmless mannerisms in order to enter more completely into the mood of this harassed and enamored person...
...Girl Crazy Z"1 EORGE and Ira Gershwin have contributed lavishly their VJ respective talents for music and lyrics to this latest production of Aarons and Freedley...
...The second was Eva Le Gallienne's unforgettable production of Romeo and Juliet, in which hackneyed lines took on a sudden new glamour and in which one fell again under the sway of poignant illusion...
...Donald Oenslager has done good work with the settings and George Hale has invented some new dancing routines which take full and brisk advantage of Gershwin's inimitable score...
...There is a sustained and almost ecstatic vitality in his score of which only he seems capable...
...The mere mechanics of staging and setting, however, are not enough to give life to Shakespeare's lines...
...There is plenty of drama in this situation, and plenty of chance for revelation of character...
...But the show as a whole suffers from the usual generous sprinkling of vulgarity—especially in contrast with that recent refreshing gust, Fine and Dandy...
...With only half the life boats needed, these men could do nothing but wait for death...
...Allowing many of Shakespeare's beautiful similes to pass unnoticed in a stress of forced diction is a trait of much traditional acting...
...message for the radio operator...
...Atlantic BRITISH film producers are making a strenuous effort to popularize their product in the American market...
...The photography in Young Woodley was often inadequate and amateurish...
...Possibly the most pertinent comment is the fully audible remark of a man several rows behind me in the theatre...
...One Ethel Merman tries a few variants on the Libby Holman technique—but they are not an improvement...
...Someone—possibly Miss Cowl herself—had an inspiration as to the staging of this production which, for sheer quaintness and novelty as well as daring, deserves recognition and acclaim...
...He plays him as a man and not as a half idiot, someone whose real suffering is apparent through all the mask of comedy...
...They grimace, hesitate, turn their backs as a sign of deep emotion and otherwise drag out the most obvious scenes interminably...
...Lewis Martin takes the part of Feste at its full value—that is, as Shakespeare's own philosophy of the paradox of the fool...
...part of Viola...
...One has the feeling that Miss Cowl was born and bred for no other purpose than to play the...
...It is fast reducing us to a pulp...
...There is no attempt at stylistic treatment...
...It is only in the last cumulative moments that the picture rises to real emotional intensity...
...At the George M. Cohan Theatre...
...The captain of the ship lets his hand tremble violently as he writes an S.O.S...
...But above all, Miss Cowl knows how to abstract the last bit of music from a lyric line without turning the line itself into a song, and without letting the words become more important than the character...
...The danger of making Shakespeare the vehicle for one or two stars lies in the use of inferior actors for the minor parts...
...Everything is simple and forthright, but maintained, so to speak, within one lyric frame—something which only actors of surpassing excellence can hope to achieve...
...On the other hand, the visual effect of the staging is excellent...
...Ginger Rogers as the heroine of this dude ranch story is "cute" and little else...
...His scene at the prison window is memorable...
...The director, Andrew Leigh, has caught up to perfection the lyric beauty of many of the scenes, without sacrificing for an instant either their realistic or their human possibilities...
...It portrays a slumming party of aristocrats in a dive where actors impersonate brigands for the amusement of the guests...
...The first of these occasions was the Basil Sydney-Mary Ellis production of The Taming of the Shrew...
...672 THE COMMONWEAL October 29, 1930 THE PLAY AND SCREEN By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Twelfth Night ON THREE separate occasions recently, we have had the joyous intimation that Shakespeare may actually be presented in such a fashion as to bring vitality as well as beauty and color into the fabric of his work...
...Arthur Hohl's Sir Andrew is perhaps the only part which borders dangerously on the traditional exaggeration...
...With another wave of his wand, Feste then opens another page of the book and you have before you in simple outline the duke's palace...
...But the British producers have lacked the technique to make the drama effective, and the writer of the script has turned possible opportunity for character study into the baldest display of heavy sentimentality...
...Rarely, if ever, has Twelfth Night been graced with more understanding and less exaggerated performances of these parts...
...The Green Cockatoo EVA LeGALLIENNE has added to her company's repertory—in conjunction with the Quintero brothers' delicious comedy, The Lady from Alfaqueque—a one-act play of Schnitzler's based on the earliest days of the French Revolution...
...Her touch is light, subtle and sure...
...It is easy to see the idea of the producers—to contrast the excitement on deck and the desperate emergency with the seemingly interminable two hours through which the men had to wait—the men who had heard the command, "Women and children first," and who knew just what it meant...
...But this impression must now be radically revised...
...The conception of Atlantic—a thinly disguished picture of the Titanic disaster—is frequently maudlin and lacks utterly any idea of the tempo at which such an epic should move...
...At the Civic Repertory Theatre...
...At each new crisis, the people of the play take minutes to express a single thought...
...As the curtain goes up, you see before a background of variously colored drapes a huge vellum bound book, some fourteen feet high and filling half the stage...
...But their success is apt to be very limited unless they can improve largely on the recent examples shown at the Cohan Theatre...
...His Sir Toby has wit and energy, as well as a bottomless capacity for drinking...
...There was a long period during which I felt that Viola Allen was perhaps the most captivating heroine we were likely to see in Twelfth Night...
...Miss Cowl instead dwells lovingly enough on each phrase, but only long enough to make its meaning clear...
...If it served as the climax to a longer play, during which we had come to know and be interested in the characters, it would rank as exceedingly effective "theatre...
...The third occasion is the current production by Kenneth Macgowan and Joseph Reed of Twelfth Night, with Jane Cowl and a supporting cast including Leon Quartermaine, Walter Kingsford and Arthur Hohl...
...The actors seem a bit too much on dress parade and honest characterization suffers from neglect...
...In the end, we come back to George Gershwin and the dancing inspired by his music as the only thoroughly worthwhile part of the entertainment...
...All in all, the unspeakable horror of the incident is turned almost to travesty...
...The theme and plot are probably a trifle too ambitious for the confines of a one-act play, resulting in an artificial compacting of elements, too little chance to indicate character, and an overcrowding of action...
...Long, long after the ship had struck the iceberg, this man was heard to sigh: "Perhaps the ship will sink sometime next week...
...This brings us by natural degrees to the tribute more than due to the distinguished playing of Walter Kingsford as Sir Toby Belch, of Leon Quartermaine as Malvolio, and Lewis Martin as Feste...
...Through this novel device, scene after scene unfolds merely by turning pages of the gigantic book...
...At the Alvin Theatre...
...As these interludes are accompanied by the light playing of a harp, flute and violin, the total effect is both engaging and whimsical...
...All in all, this is a living, vibrant, musical and exquisitely human web of magic...
...It is in the acting and the mood created and sustained that Miss Cowl and her associates have broken through the veil of stiff pedantry which has made so much of Shakespeare boring and monotonous, except on the printed page...
...Martin plays the part with grace, beauty, tenderness, and with mockery...
...I do not believe that the jazz spirit in itself is constructive...
...At all events, Miss LeGallienne's company does not succeed in eliminating this impression...
...The play ends with a closing of the volume...
...At Maxine Elliott's Theatre...
Vol. 12 • October 1930 • No. 26
