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aesthetic nullities all over the place.
The Theatre Guild bills didn’t lure. The French plays were crimes of
stupidity; “What the Public Wants” no one seemed to want; “Methusalah”
was an endurance test to be avoided, but “He Who Gets Slapped” might have
been a play had it been given a chance: Andreyeff would have been good enough
for me. Was Mr. Bennett the only actor living at the time of the production?
When the Guild has given Richard Bennett and Arnold Daly a chance they
might get John Drew to do a skit for them.
The Provincetown Players will soon confine their bills to Glaspell and
O’Neill. “The Verge” (Susan Glaspell) created frenzies of conversation
among the fireside analysts. Freudians, behaviourists, and gland-sleuths all
fought for the correct statement of the heroine. I think the glands should have
her. She operated like a mad thymus.—Gene O’Neill’s “Hairy Ape” is the
working-man’s “Verge.”
This seemed to be the year when the good plain play swarmed—plays built
on passing phases of the social structure. At the Neighbourhood, “Madras
House”: all problems, and all its little problems devitalized out of existence by a
few years and one war. “The Pigeon” at the Greenwich Village, with the
whole company in the true Sunday rhythm of Mr. Galsworthy. It is tiresome
when a writer always chooses the extraordinary, but to be fatuous about the
commonplace is Christian.
“Ambush” opened and closed the problem of the self-supporting flapper.
“Hindle Wakes” revived? at the Vanderbilt. Virtue disowned: now among
ancient customs.
There is now and then a new adventure for those who want to be “up.”
“Chauve-Souris” at the 49th Street Theatre is great fun for everybody. An
adolescent program: art student invention interspersed with Russian versions of
Silver Threads among the Gold, colour, joy, simplicity, and clean work.
“Shuffle Along” long ago became the club of several well-known artists.
No one who saw it saw it only once. Swing, swagger, rhythm, laughter, and
sounds of another race. Through all the white-man-Broadway-buncome they
show what they will do when they are really ready. There are negroes working
on true negro operas.—Florence Mills has the voice of lunar oboes and the love
songs of crocodiles.
Everything can be faced to see a clown: the froth of girls with Ed Wynn,
the banalities of the Hippodrome for the Four Fun Makers, and the Circus
indoors. The New York audience is the same at the circus as at Carnegie Hall.
It sits stolidly before every manifestation except the endurance test. Only a lady
acrobat flying around her arm socket for half an hour or the speed of a virtuoso
can draw admiration and applause.
“The Kid” seems to have finished an epoch in the wistful Charlie’s career.
“Pay Day” is repetitious. There is the “Caligari” field to be explored. The entire
aspect of today is in the work of the modern painters, poets, musicians. Chaplin
could rescue himself that way.—The movies have produced for one public only
until they have become their own afterbirth.