The Theatre: Owen Davis

He Has Been Rescued from the Ranks of Melodrama

This quiet New Englander of middle age, whom one sees at the circus with his two boys, has written, by and large, over 100 plays. Many of them have been melodramatic thrillers in which the actors tore the scenery and heroes flung themselves valiantly before hissing villains. Mr Davis has now chosen to become a realist. Two seasons ago he wrote a grim drama called The Detour and was canonized by the critics. Last year his Icebound, a genuinely human picture of his native Maine folks, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His place among American dramatists is therefore assured, along with Eugene O’Neill’s. I like the plays of Owen Davis. They are keen, humorful, filled with satirical touches and dramatic events. They have a saving touch of laughter when they are most tragic. I sat with him the other day watching a rehearsal of Home Fires, his newest play. Here are plain Americans, behaving as plain Americans do. In this play he has attempted an exceedingly difficult task: that of writing tragedy in terms of comedy. His new theme is one that either Rachel Crothers or Booth Tarkington might have chosen: the story of the breaking down of a family due to the frothy characteristics of a rather ordinary American husband—a bond salesman,a $10,000-a-year man. Miss Crothers would have discussed her problem at length and her adolescents would have represented a current difficultyin the younger generation. Mr. Tarkington would have made fun of his people. You would have been laughing at them from curtain to curtain. Not so, Mr. Davis. He has observed life well. He writes of it truly. Like all playwrights, Mr. Davis never quite knows just how his public will react to a play. Will they be conscious of the fundamental tragedy of Home Fires or will they, as in Icebound, find more of the comic than the tragic and go away feeling warmly amused ? It is hard to tell. Personally, I have seldom laughed so hard in any theatre as over a scene in which two youngsters seated on a front porch discuss eugenics. What a chance there was for burlesque—and how truly, safely and amusingly Mr. Davis has handled this scene. Mr. Davis’ rescue from the ranks of melodrama is to be applauded. No one likes to see melodrama better than do I; but it must be a pleasure to be able to portray life as it really is and make it vitally interesting. Many a man can visualize a heroine saved from a villain’s grasp by the heroic pistol point; but only the rare genius can make the purchase of a new golf course poignant. J. F.