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Show By GEORGE JEAN NATHAN. IUOrr.p very much like to lay an eve to Frederick Landis'a story from winch Augustus Thomas has fashioned t lie play called "The Copperhead," at present on view in tho Shubert theater. thea-ter. Put niy scouts, despite their dilisrenee, report t me t hey can fiirJ no trace of it on (lie various stalls about the city. Vet T shall maintain the search, for hot woe. n the li now of the play 1 believe J smell in that Ijiniiis story a simplieitv anr naturalness nat-uralness that have been lost by the dramatist, and a simplicity and naturalness nat-uralness highly essential to the persuasive per-suasive telling- of the tale and the deft sneaking of its tremors into t lie far reaches of the heart. This tale, of a man of southern Illinois Illi-nois in lStil. who professes to be a copperhead that he may spy upon traitors to the federal government ?nd who bears In silence the bitter cjlnquy of those unaware of bis se-ytret, se-ytret, needs unquestionably for its best effect, as I have notcn, simple, ' homely writing-. A pedal pressed a trifle too hard at the wrong moment, a chord struck a trifle too vigorously, vigor-ously, a pause too long drawn out, , and the effect is gone. There must be reticence, an air of artlessness, a sense of something almost al-most childishly innocent, or the 'feeling 'feel-ing vanishes as vanishes the charm of a country girl who has touched her Hps with a rouge stick. Treatment Criticised. And this ingenuousness and lack of Affectation is. In the main, precisely the thing that Augustus Thomas has removed from the story, if, indeed, it is in the original story or, if it is not in that story, has failed to remove, lie has played fortissimo passages that call obviously lor the light touch, . and he has fashioned a thing for acting act-ing that should have been fashioned for lack of acting. His method reveals re-veals itself as the . method of the theater of yesterdays, the intrinsic method of Bronson Howard (though here, ' quite true, more adroitly varnished), var-nished), the method that is forever assiduously and painstakingly point- ing episodes, the very pointing of i which contrives to make them ring hollow. The agonized screech of the mother upon learning of her son's death with the prostration of her person upon the floor, the attempt to pop the auditorium audi-torium yokelry by the infuriated ar- i tieulation of such terms as bastard, ! the twain who upon the offering of an insult step nose to nose and glare at each other like mimic bulls these are scarcely the stratagems wherewith where-with to move the more civilized eye and ear and to make of the story a document to touch the more civilized emotions. Called Old-fashioned. The stage is, of course, the proper Vpre for the tricks of the stage. But e stage of the moment is not the stage for the tricks of the stage of yesterday. The truth about Mr. Thomas, in three words, is this: He is old fashioned. And his treatment y of "The Copperhead" is, at least in Nrhis estimation, consistently old ishioned. And not old fashioned in its more alluring sense, in the sense that one's mother's first ball gown or one's father's carved briar pipe are at once old fashioned and distilling distil-ling of the pretty pathoses of distance, dis-tance, but in the hard and unregret-table unregret-table sense that stiff ready-made ascot as-cot neckties and hand-painted cuspidors cuspi-dors are old fashioned. Obviously, in a story like that of "The Copperhead" there must remain re-main still, whatever the treatment, numerous instances of energetic drama, and such moments are by no means absent from the play. There is, for example, one such striking, if patent, moment when the young son of the supposed copperhead follows his mother's will and marches off in Lincoln's cause. Other Tense Moments. And there are others such in the first coming to the father of the news of the boy's death and, more particularly, partic-ularly, in the copperhead's final explanation ex-planation of his actions, a scene more eloquent than anything else in the play. But what fills in is too baldly theatrical, too sternly the stuff of the Binge, to evoke the imperative mood of homely 'sympathy and conviction. ! On all sides of me I hear gaudy ar-Ruments ar-Ruments to the contrary, and I hear toll of copious tears wept over the spectacle and of stentorian cheers that cannot be suppressed and of heart-beatings that nigh rip apart the ribs. Rvtt of this happy party I find my-Hf!f, my-Hf!f, alas, no member. The production, produc-tion, made by the praiseworthy John r. Williams, Is at all points satisfactory, satisfac-tory, and the acting of Lionel Barry -more in the- role of the copperhead is in the main of a high and compelling J"lor, and the support accorded Air. Barrymore is generally good; but the Play, messieurs, the play is as hard as nails where it should ho as deli '"He as a memory. Therefore, the hox office receipts for the first week, X so my spies report, amounted to al-v al-v niost $14,000. e Master" 'Revived. At the Hudson, Arnold Daly, who appears to be a veritable chamois in Raping from plav to plar and from boater to theater, is currently rovlv-i? rovlv-i? Bahr'H finely wrought drama, Hie Master," in which he made a sucresstul appearance last season. His Performance in tho central role Is a thing nf admirable poiso and finish, and offers renewed testimonv to his eminence among local caholins. Tho excellent Bahr play is followed hv something from Mr. Daly's own Wild given the name "Democracy's b-'ntr." a wartime opus in which the is lynched bv a sUngcful of small children. At the Xniworth theater Pvdnev Knsenfcld, the polysyllable Pinero of .'nngacre Square, is valoronslv revlv-"w revlv-"w under fhe title of "I'ndrr n-os-''"I'e" his "l.ove Drive." oriclnallv "nveiled in the Criterion. On the ZZion "f the "rtfflnal presentation this piece. 1 observed that, it dem-""stiated dem-""stiated once again the peculiarity ' the Rosenfeld technique, oonsist-(11 oonsist-(11 in expressing the simplest l,r"icMt in the most complex manner "ssihle and CJl supplanting anv ""incsyllahir. WOI.(, th,.lt n1.lv rrop up '" the expression with a word at least l toot long, A"1. further, that the impression no consequently lakes awav from a J '' v "V this dramatist is of haying pii present at a discourse hv the ""ating team of the Tnskegee instl-the instl-the one side and bv Profcs-' Profcs-' ?, Rrander Mall hews. W. C. rtrown-i rtrown-i and a patent medicine circular on "ther. On the morning after of ' " revival of the plav in question, t 'vleJ10 VIlsion lo alter this point of Vo"tl ?s Pa,llie l-ord and John ' men. ' ""vf,yer, are an improve-i improve-i ' 0V01' 'he actors who did up the 'libiUo'n0'0''' 'n th r''iy's rrevenlent 1 Letler From Dunsany. I letter from jni nuns.-inv came. R P.PVC,':1 months ago from i J0r,,'vm lighting country, enn-V"Ci enn-V"Ci dVr 18 t,:o""!'t: 'Somehow, the "he 0,f"ioti and the noise of , " oddly enough, make a soldier I teej like writing poetry." The sound I u.,""1c" 1,11,1 ""is" of shell, wafted I 1 1, r ,,,ai"iei to the studios of I ' it Loii(n civilian playinakers, how ever, seem to inspire the latter less to poetry than to the composition of trashy comedy and tin-pot melo-diania. melo-diania. The most recent of these I.onrlon war opera to be unloaded on the American coast is named "Her Country" and Is a localization of a piece called "Kultur at Home." which is reported to he enioving a fat vogue in the Pu-itish capital. The authors of this latest epic are Rudolph Besler. author of "Don." "I.adv Patricia " etc., and Miss Sybil fipn'ttiswooil. to whose previous labors in the groves of literature I am not privv. ' As revealed locally in the Punch and Judy theater. "Her Country" is announced frankly by its sponsors to be a gesture in propaganda, and its production an attempt to inflame America against the enemv. In execution, exe-cution, however., this gesture, doubtless doubt-less planned and rehearsed with infinite in-finite ardor, discloses itself to he little lit-tle more than a small boy's thumbing thumb-ing of his nose. What the producers intended for thunderous b'-mbs of indignation in-dignation explode with the pianissimo of so many dropped eggs, and what was intended as a song of hate turns out, in the, stage rendition, to be little lit-tle more than a droll jingle. Theme of the Play. A young American girl, so goes the tale, marries an officer in the German Ger-man army directly previous to the outbreak of the war. When the war conies there comes with it to the twain the irreconcilable difference in views and faiths. This difference the play seeks to establish and develop in terms of convincing drama. But so ill is the writing and so proficiently bad the cabotinage a.nd stage direction that the result is something approaching approach-ing slap-'em-with-a-newspaper vaudeville. vaude-ville. Whether the manuscript as originally original-ly written vouchsafes the idiotic didoes di-does presently disclosed, or whether these were edged into the script by the local producers, one cannot tell, But so yelping are the melodramatic passages as one currently gets them and so thick the smear of villainy upon the rascals of the cast that the effect is decidedly comical. I have noted that the play is produced pro-duced as propaganda by a coterie who designate themselves the Propaganda Propa-ganda Producing company. Is it possible pos-sible that I, in common with so many others, have mistaken the nature of the propaganda intended? May it be that the piece has been produced by way of slyly oblique propaganda against war plays like it? I : |
