Judge — March 8, 1924 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

| | | OSSIPITCH SEVERIANITCH PZCHSHZCKOFF SMITH RITING about the talents of the Moscow Art Theater V V company is getting to be as tiresome to the reviewer as ading about those talents is getting to be boresome Any experienced reviewer, of course, can think lifferent ways to say exactly the same thing and so trick his readers into up two or three believing that they are getting something new, but it becomes a pretty hard job to make critical ion and inven- imagina tion keep up with the twelve or fifteen separate exhibitions of talent that the Russians have dis- played here in dizzy suc- I saw another such exhibition of skill the cther night in. the performance of the latest item in thei : Saltuikoff-Shchedrin’s “Death of Pazukhin,” and, frankly, I throw up cession. r repert the sponge. Edon’t know what new [can tell you unless [resort to my col- leagues’ stratagem — of stealing statistical stuff from the preface to the printed edition of the play and of filling up space with a synopsis of the plot baged from the program Being an honorable old burglar, T naturally hesi- crudely cab- tate to hornswoggle vou with any such transpar- ent cheating, and T find myself, therefore, up a tree, In the absence of spe- cific ingenuity, I may aps be forgiven for g in a few gener- al remarks which, alas, have no more to do with respectable criticism than a polecat has to do with Djer- Kiss. In the first place, then, L wish to register a loud objection to the nomenclature which Mikhail Saltuikoff- (itself a moniker of no mean snuffle) has bestowed upon his characters. It is true that IT am no authority on Russian names, since the only Russians I know personally are named Morris Gest, Al Woods and Irving Berlin; but still T feel that there must be hundreds of thousands of men and women in Russia who are named something less hard to negotiate than Zhionovsky Finagei Zhivoiedikha Tzpztrodnz- koff, for instance, or Vassilisa Phehshohz Atchzohsh Prazezk- hozvna. The characters in “The Death of Pazukhin” all bear Shehedrin by George Jean Nathan difficult for the reviewer to keep tr pler names that could hav WE DOUBT IT “Can I get two seats for to-night for ‘One Kiss’?” labels very closely resembling these and are accordingly as ack of as the changes in the cr. Surely, there are sim- bill at the Greenwich Village The: fitted the characters just as well I am convinced that a Russian dramatist who names his char- acters as Saltuikoff has named his—the program’ looks for all the world like Stephen Leacock in whiskers—is as much at fault as an American playwright) who might perhaps legitimately, but quite unnecessarily, name hischara Montmoreney Van Terwilliger, Chau- tauqua — Peabody-Pea- body — and Lichtenstein. While Tam not one of those who get much fun out of spoofing the Rus- tersStuy- vesant Laomenes sian drama for its whole- sale murders, deaths, sui- cides, epilepsies, suffoca- tions, strangulations and megrims generally, [can- not resist misgivings, as time goes on, in- the matter of the storm of exclamation marks that sweeps the text of many such dramatic scrpls, __ xclamation marks are all too often the subterfuge of talent that is itself not suffici ently emphatic. In three manu- out of every five Russian atic manuscripts Tehekhoff excepted there are more exclama- tion marks than in a Doctor Munyon adver- Every little yes and no carries a scare-mark on its A ant morning, tisement. character batiushka batiushka!!!" vever says, simply, “It He invari vs, “It is a pleasant: morning, The Russian drama is usually as indignant and stentorian about nothing as an Irishman bossing a gang of bohunks. is a pl ably. sa Great drama is a drama of commas and periods. Drama that tries assiduously to be great is a drama of ex- clamation points. A Mercuant’s play, “The New England recently 4 * put on by the Equity Players, is, as the more astute reader may guess, an attempt to depict the New Englander. ‘The (Continued on page 29) comicbooks.com