OCR Text |
Show 1W"On 7?tir?for& Ey GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. . ALPOLE observed that life is f a- tragedy to him who feels anc a corne:' 10 'im "ho 1 ? thinks. In "The Master," by Hermann Eahr. and in "The Torches," by Henri Bataille, the Walpoie dictum Is taken for premise and debated to a conclusion that at once cpaestions and contradicts, lifts an eyebrow and denies. In the former for-mer play tlie thinker is last seen broken and doubting, his heart tormented tor-mented by the final triumph of passion pas-sion over philosophy. In the la tter, currently exhibited in the Bijou theater, thea-ter, the thinker Is less shaken, though his tragedy is yet the greater. Of these two dramas, that of Bahr is much the finer piece of work. Through it runs all the restraint and humanness, all the nice balance and artistic aloofness, that one misses in the play by Bataille. This latter, ' while meeting fully all the rigid requirements re-quirements of the well-made play the desideratum of the Brander Matthewees and the rest of the pro-fessor-critic'bevy is-deficient in most of the directions that such well-made French plays are customariiy deficient. de-ficient. It fascinates one as, through the nlate-sriass of a Fifth avenue shop, a skillfully manufactured and beautiful beau-tiful waxmannequin fascinates one and leaves one just as cold and just " as much the bachelor. "The Torches," in short, is a beautiful wax play. Discusses Play's Effect. To me. at least, the French drama, of which this Bataille piece is a good example, is heavy going. Spectator upon an opus of the iik, the critic In me is attracted, while the human being be-ing in me is alienated; the one part of me watches the craftsmanship of the play, while the other part languishes lan-guishes and droops and dozes. The story of "The Torches" is of a man of science who. in the. phrase of Professor Pro-fessor Ainslie Giey, looks on amourous attraction as a mere matter of chemistry; chem-istry; the atom of hydrogren drawing-the drawing-the atom of chlorine to it to form the perfected molecule of hydrochloric acid. To the matters of his heart, he applies ap-plies the same chill reasoning that he applies to his analyses of the laboratory. Thus, when his mistress threatens inconvenience to his professional pro-fessional and domestic life, he calmly orders her to marry his best fi iend, lying easily to the latter and so getting get-ting the woman handily out of the way. Time passes; the friend suspects; sus-pects; his suspicions are verified; the end is engulfing tragedy. The thinker has been swept under In the tidal wave of the emotions he despised. The play, save In the instance of Miss Amy Ricard in the role of the sacrificing wife to the man of science, reveals no noteworthy cabotinage. Lester Lonergan is the featured member mem-ber of the company and gives an uninspired un-inspired performance. John Safnpolis, in the role of the outraged friend, would appear to imagine that the louder the hollerer, the better the actor. ac-tor. Jn conclusion, "The Torches. " while obviously very much above the grade of the promiscuous Broadway dramaturgy dra-maturgy and while a work meriting comparatively sober critical attention, is yet of a piece with the wooden sex "Drama of Bernstein and ills Gallic colleagues, the drama that reminds one of a well-built house, untenanted. Opulently Costumed. At the Manhattan opera house, the Messrs. Elliott. Com stock and Gest disclose Oscar As-" he's London success. suc-cess. "Chu Chin Chow," a spectacular extravaeanza founded on the fabie of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." That t he Britisli production matches this A m erica n exhibition, one seriously seri-ously doubts, for the local impresarios ave in the matter of expenditure been en more prodigal than usual. And when an American manager spends money on a production, he doesn't stop. The result, in this present pres-ent instance, is an opulently costumed and richly beautiful scenic exhibit that wooes the eye in a dozen different dif-ferent directions. Further than this, the stage lighting Is remarkably effective effec-tive and the stage maneuvering of the manuscript more than usually adroit. Intrinsically, the manuscript is of no account whatever. It is of the general gen-eral caliber of a Drury Iine Christmastime Christ-mastime show. But the embellishment embellish-ment of the script displays the resources re-sources of the modem spectacular stage to their full advantage and throws before the spectator a series of brilliantly colored moving pictures, earn alive and striking. Among the particularly attractive scenes are those depicting the slave market of El Kabar, the harem of KaiMm Baba and a great orchard by .moonlight-Viewed .moonlight-Viewed as a spectacle, this local production is as superior to the same management's "The Wanderer" as is a brigadier general to a sergeant. In the presenting company are the Messrs. Tyrone Power and Henry Dixey and Miss Florence Reed. Called '-Half-Cooked." The coquettish stage of the Harris theater is currently occupied by "Romance "Ro-mance and Arabella," another piece from the workshop of William Hurl-but. Hurl-but. Like the major portion of this author's labors, the play comes to the public half cooked. The central idea, that of a female Anatol, is very engaging, but upon this idea the playwright has visited an amateurish and disordered treatment. The result, re-sult, save for an occasionally humorous hu-morous bit of dialogue, is zero. An Impressionable and Wlrtuous Widow, so runs the tale, is sought in holy matrimony (shades of the Anatol Ana-tol idea!) by a squadron of cavaliers. "Falling in love," she observes, "is like talking in Central park. Either you get in further than you intend- ! ed, or you're out before you know i it." In act 1 -we find the I. W. W. ! accepted a proposal of marriage from an ardent fat suitor. No sooner is he off his knees than the I. W. W. turns her glance toward an ardent ' slim suitor. And no sooner Is this i latter out of the door than both fat and slim are out of mind and the I. i W. W. is at the telephone Inviting an admiring poet in to tea. ; From the poet, the lady's affections 1 pass to a nondescript young gentleman gentle-man in a brown suit T was not able to identify him further), and from the latter to a young school boy, and 1 from the young school boy to a bearded beard-ed medico, and from the bearded medico back to the leading man who, in act 1. gave all the rubber-stamp indications of duly landing her at the final curtain. Dash Is Lacking. That we glimpse here an idea which some Langdon Mitchell or Avery ' Hopwood might have expanded into a very amusing light comedy, is piain enough. The notion of a feminine Don Juan, as has been said, is piquing. piqu-ing. But Mr. Hurlbut has done nothing noth-ing with the notion. Most of his script is fashioned after the conventional con-ventional Broadway pattern; of originality orig-inality and humor there is not more than a dash. The main episode of the second act, showing the intrusion into, a bachelor's rooms of a person whose moral sense has been outraged by the bachelor's conduct, is a mere duplicate of the same situation In the same author's "Saturday to Monday," Mon-day," which was withdrawn a couple of weeks back at the Bijou theater. Mr. Hurlbut writes now and again a witty line, but his further theatrical theatri-cal capacities appear to be very meager. Miss Laura Hope Crews is the I. W. , and docs well by the role. The rest of the company, save for Alfred I-unt, in the poet's robes, while revealing no conspicuous instances in-stances of talent, Is good enough. Mr. Lunt's performance is worthy of especial mention. The stage settings are attractive. The production was managed by the accomplished George Foster Piatt, one of the best of our American stage directors. Joseph Riter paid the bills. Miller's Play Fails. Henry Miller's latest venture, "Anthony "An-thony in Wonderland," a play designed de-signed originally by Monckton Hoffo for Charles Hawtrey, proved a summary sum-mary and not undeserved failure. It lasted less than a week upon the stage of the Criterion. A patterning after Richard danthony's "Messenger From Mars," the exhibit revealed itself it-self to be a forced and opcrose. to-do with the cinema, an empty business, conceivable only as a parade ground for the.latest confections of Mr. Haw-trey's Haw-trey's draper. The central role is that of a sentimental senti-mental old fellow who glimpses a Mary Miles M inter upon the screen, falls a ready victim to the cute one's charms and is subsequently put by the playwright through divers fantastic fan-tastic adventures before he is permitted per-mitted to imprint the conventional connubial buss. Mr. Miller wasted his efforts on the manuscript, which was destitute of the pleasant grace associated as-sociated with some of Hoffe's previous pre-vious compositions. The role of the Pickford was in the hands of Miss Florence Shirley. The company, as a whole, presented an excellent instance of the manner in which comedy should not be acted. |