Theatre: New Plays: Nov. 12, 1923

Runnin’ Wild. This latest sample from Negroland has all the characteristics of an explosion. It is shattering to the ear, elusive to the eye and utterly devastating to the theories of musical comedy. The scenery, the costumes, the situations are all persevering primitives. The plot is a frankly threadbare clothesline on which to pin the songs and dances. The voices are powerful but rather inclined to bolt and run away among the gallery rafters. But even rags for costumes, a popular song for a plot, and a phonograph for music would be overlooked in view of the dancing and the vast enthusiasm of the players. Never before has so much energy been concentrated on a single stage. A congress of oriental dervishes would seem static in comparison. In addition, the stars, Miller and Lyles, are boisterously competent comedians. The production is on a par with that sire of colored shows, Shuffle Along.

Steadfast. A short life and an unhappy one was the portion of this curious discussion of Jewish religion. Though Frank McGlynn (Abraham Lincoln man) tried hard to make the central character convincing, the play took its leave after six days’ discouraging display.

Cyrano de Bergerac. Walter Hampden’s production of Rostand’s extravagant romance was auspicious in two particulars. Its general excellence boded well for the repertory theatre which Mr. Hampden proposes to establish in Manhattan. His own portrayal of the title character offers substantial solace to a new generation of playgoers. Seniors who saw Mansfield in the part these 20 years back compared Hampden’s performance not unfavorably.

Cyrano, the play, offers romance trimmed and garnished with all the vast imagination of Edmond Rostand’s genius. It makes no pretense of credibility; it is frankly a love story with plenty of swordplay and roses. Cyrano, himself, is an individual whose enormous heart is only exceeded in magnitude by his nose. Such a nose has Cyrano that he simply cannot attract affection from his heart’s desire, Roxane. So he fights and laughs and sings his way through the entertaining history to a conclusion which, though well known for a quarter of a century, must remain undivulged in deference to critical ethics.

Hampden’s performance is as a spring wound up, the motive power for a successful run. Less important but equally satisfactory are the elaborate, tasteful settings and the exceeding free, and altogether new, translation into blank verse by Brian Hooker.

John Corbin: “An audience exceptionally intelligent and cultivated in the art of the drama followed his performance with rapt attention and breathless interest.”

The New York World: “It is easy to use superlatives. One who saw the play at the National [Theatre] last night might use them all with justice.”

Duse. It is said that the actor’s fame is the most fleeting of all earthly glory. Though this be true, there are surely exalted souls in Heaven who would trade musty volumes of their memories for the greeting accorded to Eleonora Duse,* 64, and still much alive, at her “American appearance after 20 years” at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. The great auditorium, crowded literally to the chandeliers, roared its united respect and admiration till the golden rafters rang. Duse, the greatest living actress, was accorded honor as majestic as it was sincere.

Mme. Duse opened her brief repertory with La Donna del Mare (” The Lady from the Sea”) by Henrik Ibsen. She played it in Italian.

Probably nine-tenths of the audience had never seen Duse. When first she came along the little garden path at the foot of the towering painted mountains her appearance was startlingly unusual. A slight woman, her hair white, without a speck of make-up to conceal the wrinkles. Her clothes strangely simple. Her movements decisive, restrained and yet assured. Her hands, once the toast of all Europe, still stirring with their nervous eloquence. Her voice small, curiously musical.

And then the play.

The Lady from the Sea is considered by critics one of the lesser works of Ibsen. It centers entirely on the character of Ellida which has ” suffered a sea change” through years of lonely residence in a lighthouse. She is distant, disturbing, detached. Into her early life there had come a wandering sailor who had taken her heart away with him upon his travels. Thinking him drowned, she had married a stuffy country doctor. The sailor returns.

Obviously the action of the play is largely psychological. Without Ital-ian much of this drama must necessarily drown, like Ellida’s sailor, among the waves of unfriendly verbs and consonants. But for the performance of the great tragedienne, the production would be worse than worthless.

Yet even the barriers of an unfamiliar tongue are broken by the uncanny force of Duse’s personality. She might have been reciting passages from an Italian dictionary for all the audience cared. She held them breathless through four long acts of conversation unrelieved.

Alexander Woollcott: “Her performance of Ellida Wangel was among the few truly beautiful and exhilarating things which we have seen in our time.”

John Corbin: ” The voice of a silver twilight peopling an atmosphere Corot might have imagined with multitudinous accents of the human spirit.”

Percy Hammond: “What she does and what she seems to be are unimportant so long as she is what she is.”

Suppression of Vice

Citizen Juries Will Purify Offensive Plays

The Theatre has decided that it is oversexed. Fourteen plays (TIME, Oct. 29) plus various musical revues now current in Manhattan were intent upon the discussion or display of feminine attraction and its results upon a fallible mankind. So intent were six of these that the Society for the Suppression of Vice began to move restlessly in its cocoon. There was danger that it might burst and become a full-fledged moth to eat through the linings of the managers’ money bags. But no. The managers, the actors, the playwrights put their hard old heads together. A plan developed.

It was obvious from the amount of comment lately aroused by the various dramatic disquisitions upon morality that some sort of censorship was inevitable. Therefore those whose daily bread is cut and buttered in theatrical box offices wished the censorship to assume least offensive form. No Blue Law Committees for them or salaried censors whose efficiency might be measured by the number of plays they purged. Citizens, they demanded, plain citizens who support the Theatre. And citizens they will have.

A year-old plan was brought to light, brushed off, adopted as their brain child. A committee of 250 citizens, men and women, no one of whom may have any connection with the theatrical business or with any reform movement, committee or organization, will be selected. From this group juries of twelve must stand ready to be called. Complaints, according to the ruling, must be received directly by the City Commissioner of Licenses. Complaints through the Society for the Suppression of Vice will not be considered, because the Society insists on withholding the identity of its communicants. When a sufficient quantity of complaints against a play or any part thereof are on record in the Commissioner’s office, and when he has satisfied himself that these letters are sponsored by reputable and intelligent beings, he may convene the jury.

The dozen jury members will thereupon witness a performance of the play and meditate upon its merits and demerits. If nine of the meditations are finally unfavorable, a decision will be rendered to the producer. He will proceed to delete offensive sections of his entertainment—or withdrew it altogether.

Secrecy, justice, despatch are therefore afforded everyone concerned. Particularly is secrecy deemed necessary since publicity regarding a suspiciously unhealthy play draws thousands to the spot of the infection.

Three plays now candidates for the red spotlight are The Lullaby, Artists and Models, the Vanities.

The Best Plays

These are the plays which, in the light of metropolitan criticism, seem most important:

Drama

CASANOVA—Like a volume of fine old steel engravings colored and come to life. Lowell Sherman as the gentleman on his knees; Katharine Cornell the lady whose hand he is kissing.

RAIN—The population is still fighting the speculators for the privilege of watching Jeanne Eagels among the South Sea Missionaries.

SUN UP—The soft accents and the hard hearts of Carolina hill folk expressing a primitive patriotism when feud hatred is drowned by the bugle of war.

TARNISH—The latest of important sex discussions. Proving that “Frailty, thy name is man.”

Comedy

AREN’T WE ALL?—An amiable disquisiton designed to demonstrate that man and woman, born fools, have not improved their station. Cyril Maude and his best drawing-room manner chiefly in the spotlight.

THE CHANGELINGS—A wise and witty modern comedy made doubly important by the acting of Henry Miller, Blanche Bates, Ruth Chatterton, Laura Hope Crews, Geoffrey Kerr.

IN LOVE WITH LOVE—A vast amount of nonsense revolving about three men and which one of them Miss Lynn Fontanne shall marry.

MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY— Mrs. Fiske the presiding genius in a gracious comedy of English country life by St. John Ervine.

THE NERVOUS WRECK—If you are the kind who takes pink pills, a visit will be of more value than a dozen doctors. Considered the funniest farce for five years past.

THE SWAN—Perfect high comedy of those who bask in the brilliance of modern continental Royalty. Eva Le Gallienne, Basil Rathbone, Philip Merrivale, Hilda Spong are the principal players.

WINDOWS—A dustcloth applied by John Galsworthy to the cloudy philosophy of six variant individuals concerned with the redemption of a workhouse girl returned to civilization.

Musical Shows

Devotees of musical entertainment will derive particular satisfaction from the following shows: Poppy, Ziegfeld Follies, Music Box Revue, Battling Buttler, Greenwich Village Follies, Wild flower, Scandals.

Notes

In Richmond, Va., the American premiere of John Drinkwater’s Robert E. Lee was held. Governors, descendants and delegates from all over the South attended to see that their hero was accorded dramatic justice.

Another biographical play soon to make its bow (in Manhattan) is Queen Victoria by Walter Prichard Eaton and David Carb. The play is episodic and takes the Queen from girlhood to the Diamond Jubilee. Beryl Mercer will play Victoria.

Four Hamlets will be seen on Broadway before Christmas—Barrymore, Sothern, Hampden and Sir John Martin-Harvey (Britisher).

*Duse will give 20 matinees in the U. S. (ten in Manhattan; ten in Philadelphia, Boston and other cities not yet announced). -Ibsen’s Ghosts, Cosa Sia, by Gallarati-Scotti, La Porta Chiusa by Marco Praga. La Citta Morta by d’Annunzio, complete her repertory. For her biography, see TIME, July 30.