The Theater: New Scene in Manhattan

Don Juan in Hell (by George Bernard Shaw; produced by Paul Gregory) is the scene from Shaw’s Man and Superman that is regularly omitted on the stage. There are good reasons for omitting it: it is over two hours long, and it is merely tossed into the play. But there are far better reasons for performing it, at least by itself: it is not only the finest thing in Man and Superman, but the most brilliant talkfest, the most glittering dialectical floor show of modern times. And underneath all its riot of paradoxes it contains Playwright Shaw’s most serious philosophical beliefs.

The current production, the first ever to reach Broadwav. is all the more noteworthy for its distinguished cast-Charles Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead. Standing in evening clothes in front of mikes, they merely read the scene with an apparent absence of acting that conceals a great fund of it.

Shaw’s Hell Scene follows-or rather postscripts-the classic Don Juan legend. Juan has been in Hell for some years; the Commander he slew has been longer in Heaven; and Dona Ana, the Commander’s daughter whose seduction led to the slaying, has just died. She is indignant and aghast at having been consigned to the underworld; even the discovery that her father is moving there by choice does not appease her-better, as she sees it, to yawn in Heaven than revel in Hell. This, she is told, is not the fashionable view: Heaven is so dull that almost no one but the English can endure it. Hell, run by an urbane Devil who is as eager to please as a resort-hotel proprietor, is itself a kind of resort, full of animal enjoyments for no longer flesh-bound escapists.

But a highly Shavian Don Juan denounces Hell for just that reason: it is no proper place for man, for the one animal with brains. And what, sneers Satan, has man done with his precious brains?

Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Man’s wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself . . . The plague, the famine, the earthquake . . . were too spasmodic in their action; the tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel enough: something more . . . destructive was needed; and that something was Man, the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, the electric chair . . .

Juan is even more Shavian about woman than about man. He insists that he kept running off not through boredom after possessing them, but through fear of being possessed. Shaw’s Juan is nine parts Puritan to one part libertine, and for him Heaven means hard work, not golden harps. There the Life Force, that instrument of man’s purposeful striving, will carry him higher & higher, convert him into superman. Shaw’s Heaven, far from being a blissful goal, would seem a mere way station on the road to perfection-as his Life Force, magnificent so long as it is an evolutionary process, would seem to end as pure intelligence functioning in an utter void.

But if Don Juan in Hell is the essence of Shaw’s highly debatable beliefs, it is also the epitome of his constantly dazzling methods. Technically no more than an extended dialogue, pyrotechnically it constitutes a splendid show. There are drawbacks: like almost everything of Shaw’s, the Hell Scene could be shorter. But the characters score their points like polished duelists, flash their rhetoric like master showmen, make ideas hiss and coil and spring like creatures of melodrama. There are drawbacks to the performers, too: Charles Boyer’s decided French accent and Charles Laughton’s occasional tendency to ham. But in general, the quartet offers fine ensemble playing, with Boyer a magnetic Juan, Laughton a suavely smiling Devil.

Though Manhattan’s one-night audience cheered the First Drama Quartette with a proprietary sense of discovery, the .troupe had already played Manhattan, Kans.-and 105 other whistle stops, cities and metropolises in 35 states, England and Scotland. The trek to what Actor-Director Charles Laughton calls “the huge neglected audience” began last February. Since then, in three tours consisting mostly of one-night stands, Don Juan in Hell has proved a steady sellout everywhere, in arenas, theaters and stadiums, outgrossing South Pacific in Denver, drawing an audience of 3,800 in Emporia, Kans. (pop. 15,500), emptying Carnegie Hall’s ticket racks in eight hours. Total receipts so far: about $500,000.

This flourishing new show business grew out of the possibilities that a bright young agent named Paul Gregory, now 30, spotted three years ago in Actor Laughton’s talent for reading classics aloud. Laughton had started doing it to entertain troops in hospitals during World War II; Gregory thought it would also appeal to paying audiences. Against the advice of another Hollywood agent (“Most people can read nowadays-who needs it?”), Gregory mortgaged his car to book a concert-like tour called An Armful of Books. Laughton’s readings from the Bible and Shakespeare on through James Thurber have since carried him on two more such tours.

Gregory next proposed forming a drama quartet that would act as well as read, and Laughton seized on the idea as an effective way to present his favorite piece of Shavian writing. When Laughton applied for Shaw’s permission (and terms), the old man sounded almost as skeptical as the Hollywood agent had been. “The Hell scene is such a queer business,” he wrote, “that I can’t advise you to experiment with it, but I should certainly like you to try it.”

The experiment not only brought Shaw a fat stream of royalty checks until his death, but it stimulated a flagging Hollywood demand for Laughton and Charles Boyer in film roles and has given all four members of the quartet new earnings comparable to their income from the movies.

Producer Gregory, already booking Don Juan in Hell for a fourth tour next fall and winter, has a waiting list of stars eager to step in if any of the quartet should have to drop out. Last week another of his pleasant prospects was a feeling among Manhattan playgoers that they were a huge neglected audience for Don Juan. He booked the show for a four-week return engagement on Broadway, starting Nov. 29. Other commitments permitting, it could probably run merrily for at least a season.