The Play and Screen
Skinner, Richard Dana
T THE PLAY By RICHARD DANA SKINNER Lysistrata WO thousand three hundred and forty-one years ago, Aristophanes presented for the first time a comedy, to be known as Lysistrata. Today, the...
...There is a great difference between the offensiveness of sneaking, snivelling innuendo and the loud and rather empty laughter of sheer vulgarity...
...It is only in the manner of the production that the Philadelphia Theatre Association, by giving a free hand to Norman Bel Geddes, has contributed something of value to the season...
...The treatment is farcical, and, naturally, broad, but the great health of Aristophanes and his great wisdom hold it firmly on this side of everything that can be called leering or licentious...
...Littell and obedient patronesses like those whose names decorate the Lysistrata program—the fear of being called a prude...
...Information on binding will be given upon application to the offices of The Commonweal...
...Gilbert Seldes has done the job of translating it into modern idiom and adapting it to a modern viewpoint, while Norman Bel Geddes has designed its stage setting and directed its production...
...The Dante project is, I still believe, destined to be the crowning achievement of Geddes' career...
...The axis of the play is the relation between the sexes...
...His one setting is a superb piece of imaginative design...
...It handles the facts of life with about as much reserve as your pet comedian handles a custard pie...
...It is too bad to have it wasted as esthetic sugar-coating to sweeten the taste of Aristophanes on the loose...
...Arrangements have been made for binding Volume XI in leather or cloth...
...Half the "leering and licentious" plays on Broadway these last few years would never have been produced if the managers could not count on this innate fear animating many of the critics—or on another breed of hypocritical condemnation which carries a wink and the sly suggestion that the show is "naughty...
...It is simply unfortunate that he so rarely has the chance to spread his talents on something thoroughly worth while...
...Must Mr...
...They protest too much...
...The two things conspicuously lacking among most of our critics are the healthy common sense which is never prudish and the simple courage to call the bluff of rampant hypocrisy...
...Aside from all other questions, Lysistrata has too many long and boring passages to be inherently good entertainment...
...The result is a foregone conclusion —making the intermediate horseplay all the more patently nothing but intentional vulgar detail...
...He acts on the lesser of two fears...
...Moreover, it is something so much greater than Geddes himself, that at every stage in its development, he must be at a pitch of high aspiration to make reality measure up to dreams...
...But when we have admitted all this, we have simply stated the obvious fact that there are degrees of offensiveness—things which offend the moral sense, because they are dishonest, hypocritical and false in their values, and other things which offend simply better judgment and good taste...
...If you find the honest answer to this simple question, I think you will come dangerously near to discovering why the producers take such elaborate pains to set forth the "great health" of the "greatest comic spirit" of the Athenian age...
...My only objection to it is that it does not carry a Greek feeling—certainly not an Athenian feeling...
...We have simply admitted that there may be degenerate wit and ordinary vulgar wit...
...This elephantine vulgarity has the one merit of being a protest against timid, smirking and treacherous dirt...
...In the same pathetic and childish spirit of self-justification, Robert Littell, writing in the World, cries out "Anyone who can think of it as a dirty show had better change the linen wrapped round his own dirty little soul...
...Littell would "not print in the World the leering details that make the Lysistrata a Broadway hit," and comes still closer to bed rock when he advises the World critic that "on the first night at least there were more dirty little souls who enjoyed the Lysistrata than there were dirty little souls who did not...
...It is stupendous both in design and concept...
...The title page and index for Volume XI of The Commonweal are now ready...
...Recently, after surviving the scrutiny of the Philadelphia police force, the entire production has been brought to New York...
...They are—or should be—perfectly aware of the essential vulgarity of Lysistrata, but under cover of the classical robe, they are all too anxious to poison the wells of honest criticism or objection...
...Lysistrata belongs plainly and solidly in the class of vulgar wit...
...Why bring up the issue at all, if the play is so conspicuously aseptic...
...I dare you to do it" says the gang leader—and the weakest boy in the gang accepts the dare simply because he is afraid of being called a coward...
...It has been the habit of the great comic spirits throughout the ages to work off their excess energy every now and then by being uproariously vulgar—not only, it may be remarked, on the subject of sex, but on a wide range of human activities...
...If the greatest comic spirit of the greatest age civilization has ever known is offensive, one may suspect that the fault is not so much his as ours...
...Within the limits of its deliberate vulgarity, it has only a few minutes of tavern fun...
...Today, the Philadelphia Theatre Association, with a list of distinguished patronesses half a column long, have sponsored a new adaptation of the old and somewhat boring wheeze...
...But the overwhelming genius of Geddes lies in his knowledge of the power of line and rhythmic design and color and lighting to produce emotional effect...
...Having as its theme the determination of the women of Greece to end wars by refusing to associate with the men until they make peace, it neglects none of the obvious consequences of such a resolution...
...It is distinctly Asiatic...
...These will be sent upon request...
...It leaves nothing to the imagination, either in speech or in action...
...All of which leads back to the curious psychology of fear which dominates obedient critics like Mr...
...Percy Hammond comes nearer the truth when he expresses the belief that Mr...
...Its one and only idea is spread so thin that it soon becomes painfully obvious...
...The setting for Lysistrata is worthy of one of the great Greek tragedies...
...In one sense, there is a small grain of truth in this statement...
...Littell prance so promptly when Gilbert Seldes cracks the whip...
...In the present production an effort has been made to hold to the same spirit of the original, removing only certain references which twenty centuries have made inappropriate but retaining the robust flavor and the inoffensive roaring mirth of the original...
...Why, then, was the Lysistrata selected for presentation rather than The Frogs...
...Thus "the greatest comic spirit of the greatest age civilization has ever known" simply proves his "greatness" by taking the easy road of the barroom jokester...
...It says: "The Lysistrata of Aristophanes is the one masterpiece of Greek comedy which seems to have everlasting life...
...There is nothing in Lysistrata to compare to the swift and subtle satire of The Frogs...
...For special reasons, I should like to quote the foreword of the producers in the program (the same program containing the list of patronesses...
...It deals with men and women and war and each of these subjects is handled with a sort of penetrating realism...
...The gorgeous visual effects of Arabesque were wasted on a play of miniature worth...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 8
