Theatre: New Plays: Nov. 15, 1926

The Master Builder. Eva Le

Gallienne scored a success in this Ibsen play last year. A builder of churches, turned bitter against God, concentrates thereafter upon homes for human beings. Fired by the love of a young woman who has sought him out in his childless house, h.9 builds one of these homes with high towers reaching up to the clouds. The master, builder even climbs to the top of his own creation, unfurls the flag at its summit, vindicates his courage before detractors below, before God above, before the woman he loves. His audacity spells his downfall. Miss Le Gallienne is also audacious. She produces an Ibsen play without a stage director. Autumn Fire, an Irish play and a fine one, is built around the character of a hale, old country gentleman, boldest horseman, keenest hunter, most ardent lover in the county. A too spirited mare breaks the stalwart frame. His own son, his own young bride break the vigorous spirit. These two move with Nature. They love, while the old dictator groans on his death bed, stubbornly believing himself invincible against the encroachments of time. The iron is driven, at last, into his soul. Broken in body, robbed of his faith in his own supremacy, he falls, like an oak that tried to withstand the spring floods long after its sap had dried up. Playwright Murray has created a character, brilliantly interpreted by Una O’Connor; a wizened Cassandra, whose unheeded prophecies point, from the beginning, to the Nemesis.

Saturday Night. Benavente’s drama of a courtesan who ruled an empire, held it less dear than her daughter, was accorded the honor of opening the Civic Repertory Theatre season. A more tense, colorful-play could hardly have been selected. Wisely, Eva Le Gallienne guards against arousing suspicion that her theatre is “arty.” Though the five tableaux call for much changing about of scenery, few in the audience left their seats after the curtains, because Miss Le Gallienne had provided a Russian Gypsy orchestra that can strum ten minutes into nothing at all.

Loose Ends. Dion Titheradge, author of those beguiling Chariot Revue skits, appears in his own play, a murderer. . . good, reformed murderer, down in the world after 15 years’ incarceration, yet attractive enough to win the heart of London’s dazzling actress, Nina Grant (Violet Heming). After the wedding, the London equivalent of the tabloid (and there is such a thing), publishes his criminal record. But Nina reveals a great heart, in spite of a petty social circle. The play discovers an appealing sincerity that stands on the brink of bleary sentimentality, leans over the edge to peek, but not to topple, into the lava below.

Gentle Grafters. An attractive damsel, under personal supervision of a wicked old baggage, would exploit the modern business man, remain a nice girl withal. Artfully, she barters little tokens of self-respect for ten dollar bills, dinners, gowns, invitations to the country. As it must, under even the most liberal credit system, there comes a day of reckoning. The poor girl has but one asset. She surrenders her virtuous distinction. A little moth, a little flame, a little singe-it is nothing to bring a lump to the throat. Katharine Alexander makes it more interesting than it deserves.

The Play’s The Thing. Sandor Turai (Holbrook Blinn), like Playwright Ferenc Molnar himself, is an urbane gentleman, an excellent dramatist. Therefore, he handles a scandal as he would a theatrical situation; and in doing so, affords the audience a play within a play, an agreeable course in dramatic construction, a joyous evening in the theatre.

Dramatist Turai and Collaborator Man sky have taken under their aging wings young Albert Adam (Edward Crandall), composer, in love with Prima Donna Ilona Szabo (Catherine Dale Owen). At a houseparty, the three gentlemen arrive unannounced, are ushered into the room adjacent to the beloved prima donna’s. Through the thin wall pierce unfortunate snatches of conversation—”One little kiss,” “All right, you may kiss me,” “How soft, round, velvety,” “Well, you don’t have to bite.” The voice of the fair Ilona! The voice of Actor Almady! Young Albert is heartbroken, will tear up the music inspired by Ilona, will never compose again.

Sandor Turai, mellow cynic, would rather his dear Albert retain a beautiful illusion than know the bitter truth. So he writes a play during the night, works the scandalous conversation into the dialogue, makes the two culprits act it before the houseparty guests, thus makes the naughty prima donna partner to a virtuous rehearsal in her chamber the night before. It was rather difficult to find some-thing ” ‘soft, round, velvety,’—and respectable.” But Playwright Molnar is nothing if not ingenious. He has even given Johann Dwornits-chek, footman, a personality. Ralph Nairn plays the part. The entire cast, headed by Holbrook Blinn, ably supports the playwright in offering a rare, charming, skilful entertainment, one that wise play-goers will not overlook.

Seed of the Brute. A few weeks ago, Mayor Walker warned the New York theatres that shows offensive to a neat sense of decency would not be tolerated. Then and therefore, the Little Theatre lifted its curtain with a sense of superiority, a trace of hauteur. Was not the Little Theatre home of 2 Girls Wanted, the season’s unassailably 100% pure play? Now 2 Girls Wanted has moved into the new John Golden Theatre. Fate has directed to the Little Theatre Seed Of The Brute. This is another one of those things that dive, face first, into the barnyard muck, to seek out reality. Calvin Roberts, profuse breeder, lives to see his offspring, legitimate and illegitimate, turn from him to more noble affiliations. The forceful old brute is left destitute, just when he needs most the companionship of a son. So much is true emotion. Hilda Vaughn and Robert Ames bring out all the play’s possibilities. But the struggle for sensationalism churns up too much mud. Caponsacchi is a theatrical version by Arthur Goodrich and Rose Palmer of The Ring and The Book. After the Browning manner, it plunges right into the crisis at the very prologue, then develops the play in retrospect, concludes with an epilogue that picks up the thread of the prologue at the precise point where the first act broke it off. It is not detracting from the merits of the playwrights to say that Browning’s poetry, ingeniously worked into the dialogue, brings the play into focus on a high level that it could never have attained by virtue of its craftsmanship and story outline alone. For they have made Caponsacchi a good, old-fashioned play—with protagonists pure white, antagonists pitch black, with only one or two intermediately tinted characters,, and those relegated to comic relief roles. The titular hero, a virile priest, loves a maid bound to a Sadistic, villainous husband, Guido Franceschini. The tragic issue centres in Caponsacchi’s effort to save the girl from her bestial oppressor, at the same time convince the judges that their love was on that high, holy, spiritual plane to which the imagination of a cynical world is prone to ascribe the smell of clay. In the end comes the typical Robert Browning touch—death on earth dispensed by the villain; justification of the spirit that aspired to Heaven, dispensed by Pope Innocent XII, great-souled arbiter who heard the trial, hidden in the courtroom’s curtained alcove.

From saint to rollicking blade is a glide that Walter Hampden can execute with grace. This play affords an opportunity. Opposite him is Edith Barrett as the spirituelle Pompilia. Some day, perhaps, the world at large will take Miss Barrett to its heart, for she is an artist, lovely, talented, understanding. If high honors are to go anywhere, they belong on the black brow of Ernest Rowan. He has long been the fidus Achates of the Hampden Company. As Franceschini, he proves himself the most outrageously vicious, hateful wretch that ever wrenched fair maid from her lover’s arms.

List

Theatregoers will find the following selections worthy of first consideration.

DRAMA

American Tragedy—Dramatic version of Theodore Dreiser’s tragedy about a boy tossed to the electric chair by U. S. civilization.

Autumn Fire—Reviewed this week.

Broadway—The tinseled outside of life on the inside of a night club. Brilliantly theatrical.

Caponsacchi—Reviewed this week.

Captive—A soul bound to a nature damned by man.

Civic Repertory—Great plays at popular prices ; by Eva Le Gallienne’s company.

Daisy Mayme—George Kelly’s particulariza-tions about the run of folk in a small town.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes—Anita Loos’s traveling siren on a business trip.

Juarez and Maximilian—Downfall of an idealist; employing the incident of Maximilian von Habsburg, Emperor of Mexico. For those who take their theatre thoughtfully.

Meller, Raquel—Distracting disease.

On Approval—Mayfairish sophisitication, for the amusement, especially, of people who are gracefully, politely, bored with life.

White Wings—Horse-cabbie into taxi-cabbie.

ENTERTAINMENTS WITH Music

Americana, lolanthe, Katja, Countess Maritza, Scandals, Queen High, Criss Cross.

The following also are playing:

Abie’s Irish Rose—The immortal weed. At Mrs. Beam’s—An English boarding house, face to face with a fascinating woman-eater.

Black Boy—The fight game reveals the Negro ; with Paul Robeson.

Blonde Sinner—Trifling amusement.

Donovan Affair—Broadway’s best bugaboo.

Fanny—Brice.

Gentle Grafters—Reviewed in this issue.

Henry—Behave!—Amnesia and the essential humanity of a prig.

House of Ussher—A sententious lot.

The Humble—Dostoievsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” Well dramatized.

If I Was Rich—If you do not mind the title you will like the show.

Jeweled Tree—Sincere, dull painting of Egyptian mythology.

Judge’s Husband—Between laughs, William Hodge advances the theory that woman’s place is in the home.

Just Life—Dead from the neck up; elsewhere, sick.

Ladder—If the 20th Century does not suit, transmigrate to the 25th.

Lion -Tamer—Philosophy of what, when and why a lion will scratch. Thin.

Little Spitfire—Another slavey in Southampton gets applause.

Loose Ankles—Notable wisecracks in a negligible play.

Loose Ends—Reviewed this week.

Lulu Belle—Lenore Ulric, as a dusky prostitute, struts her stuff from Harlem to strangulation.

Noose—Murders and bootleggers mixed with lots of hokum.

Pearl of Great Price—Reviewed this week.

Sex—A sin against the theatre.

Shanghai Gesture—Florence Reed in the Chinese underworld.

Seed of the Brute—Reviewed this week.

They All Want Something—William Tilden serves doubles.

2 Girls Wanted—Charming, harmless.

We Americans—The melting pot simmers slowly.

Woman Disputed—How Ann Harding won the World War and Lowell Sherman lost it.

Yellow—A good melodrama that started

out to be a good tragedy.