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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.