The Theatre: New Plays: Nov. 26, 1923

The Camel’s Back. Playwright Maugham herein concerned himself with an irresponsible investigation of the regions of the utterly inane. He involved himself in such a feathery swirl of epigram and complication that along in Act II he found that he simply could not make his wits’ ends meet. He gave up trying.

Concentrating on the conversation —which is steadily diverting and occasionally dazzling—one is led to suspect that Mr. Maugham, retiring after a particularly amusing dinner party, stopped Jong enough between his collar and his braces to jot down the smartest of the evening’s causerie. On second thought, the play is altogether too smoothly starched for that. Mr. Maugham must have written it in a full dress suit.

It is graced with one of those casts which could take turns reading selections from the Social Register and provide exciting entertainment for all. Charles Cherry is the over-bearing husband who is finally overborne. Violet Kemble Cooper lives and breathes the wise and witty wife; Joan Maclean flaps most agreeably. Louise Closser Hale is pungently amusing as the septuagenarian grandmother who has lived her extended lifetime exclusively in the company of ladies and gentlemen, and is getting rather tired of them.

Alexander Woollcott: “Banter which means business.”

Percy Hammond: “Light, graceful, witty and not too elegant.”

Queen Victoria. Every now and again a biographical play comes along and settles comfortably in the center of the bull’s-eye. Then for a space a mass of playwrights whose aspirations exceed their acumen present passing glimpses of every spectacular individual in the terrestrial pageant. Usually the results are terrible. Notable exceptions are Disraeli, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria.

In this day when investigation into the affairs of Victoria is pursued internationally with as much zeal as scientists exert in ascertaining the private life of the paramecium, it is rather exciting to see her come to life upon the stage. Though the authors (Walter Prichard Eaton and David Carb) protest volubly that the play is not a dramatization of Strachey, it is the readers of his book who will be particularly attracted. The play has caught all the quaint charm of the girl who developed retiring domesticity into a regal legend. It was Strachey who popularized the legend in America.

From that confused dawn full of hurrying footsteps and nervous whispering when Victoria learned that she was Britain’s ruler until the Diamond Jubilee, the action of the play extends. Prime Ministers, Princes, famous men of three score years drift by in bright review. Chief among them is the Prince Consort, Albert. To play this part the Equity director rescued Ulrick Haupt from the obscurity of a German stock company in Chicago. Haupt expressed his gratitude by giving one of the most decisive and diverting performances of the season. Victoria is in the capable hands of Beryl Mercer, whose interpretation is a minor masterpiece.

John Corbin: “The English gift of Abraham Lincoln acknowledged by an American Queen Victoria.”

Percy Hammond: “Excepting the soft acidities of Mr. Strachey’s investigation, it is the most entertaining, so far as we know, of the impudent annals of its exemplary topic.”

“A Royal Fandango.” It makes little difference what play Ethel Barrymore elects to invigorate with her presence. At least it has made little difference since she played Déclassée. Everything to which she has turned her hand has been trifling. (Cries of ” No, No, Romeo and Juliet! ” Retorts of ” Gross sentimentalism! And look what happened anyway.”)

Again she has come forward with what might be crudely but clearly termed an assemblage of junk. Zoé Akins, who has written considerable worthy material for the stage (Déclassée, A Texas Nightingale), is noted on the program as the individual originally responsible. The play looks pretty much as though Arthur Hopkins (producer) took Ethel over to the Akinses one afternoon last Summer and said to Zoe, ” Run up to your playroom, like a good girl, and bring down something bright for Ethel.”

She plays a fascinating and distrait Princess of a mythical European country who is by way of being temporarily bored with her Royal Family. She takes up with a matador and follows him to his castle in Spain. Royal husband arrives in time to break up the affair, in time to let the commuters catch the 11:15 for Dobbs Ferry.

Miss Barrymore, of course, simply picks the play up and juggles it with all her amazing virtuosity. It provides her with a typically Barrymore part.Hers is a personality which makes irresistible and inimitable seem weakling and inexpressive adjectives. America would be a far drearier land without her.

Heywood Broun: ” Miss Barrymore has seldom played comedy better.”

The Cup. A singular mixture of God and God damn; of moving truth and gaudy melodrama; of authentic dramatic intensity and (at least two examples of) incredible ill taste— such is The Cup.

The Holy Grail appears as the pivot of the play. It turns up in the dirty East Side nest of a gang of crooks. One crook steals it from another. Unfortunately for him the smarter swindler’s girl who is deeply religious learns through her priest the identity of the vessel The conflict between them, falling slightly at a rather conventional climax, provides the drama.

The opening performance of this extraordinary mixture was studded with the most vicious profanity that has yet been heard upon the American stage. Add to this a most realistic experiment in woman-beating and you have a rather formidable sum of objections which were raised against it. But before the police could act the harshness was deleted.

Burns Mantle: “A drama of an honest sentimental value.”