Life — June 4, 1925 — page 24: what you’re looking at

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

Summing Up OW for that summary of the season! You must have heen wondering where it was. We were waiting for everything to be in because a thing like this has to be done completely or not at all. Perhaps not at all would be even better. As we sit here in our easy-chair and look through our pipe-smoke, as the girls representing the different plays of the year pass by in review, we are struck by the fact that so few of them dealt with what Dr. John Roach Straton calls “sex.” Out of seventy-five legitimate plays under dis- ry whistle ean as that cussion, forty-eight were as ¢ . you hear so much about. The other (subtract it for your self. We've got writing to do) dealt more or less seriously with the Eighth Lively Art. That's not so bad, when you consider that two-thirds of an iceberg is submerged and that William De Morgan was past fifty when he began to write That's about all we have to say concerning sex plays One is so easily: misunderstood. E must note, however, the number of recalcitrant daughters that the season produced. It just seemed for a while as if no one had well-behaved children on the stage. The very first’ play of the on, “Dancing Mothers,” started the and it went right on down the list. Just as soon a you saw the daughter of the house light a cigarette, you knew that before the curtain to the second act she was going to end up in some bache! s, compromised to the point of stamping her foot ce you!” Tf the daughters a wn, TE don't know what we a saying hate you! I as badly behaved next se: ing to do with them GEE E® OTHER serious trend during the year was the in creased mortality in revue sketches. We have figures to show that out of thirty revue sketches, twenty-two ended with the violent murder of one of the characters. When the writers had no other way to finish their little acts they would have one of the characters pull out a gun and shoot another, followed by a “black-out.” This is all very funny, and helps get the characters off the stage, but where is it going to end? How are they going to finish their sketches next season? Setting fire to the theatre would be one way. We could think of others, but wh away good ideas to revue-authors? Let them end their own sketches. HOSE interested im the march of fashion will be glad to know t the Tiny Garments are going out of style as a method of annunciation. We haven't seen a_ tiny rment pulled out of a sewing-basket all season. In one t's the sense in giving pli pair of baby-shoes was kept in the side-board along with the sherry and was snapped out whenever the action dragged, but it was more of a memento than a warning The prospective arrival of an heir is now coming to he accepted socially as respectable talk, and in the more rowdy s the word “baby” is sometimes actually spoken out loud, another sign of the state to which our theatre has fallen. Sodom, Gomorrah, Rome, Vienna, New York, New Haven and Hartford. HERE have been many “significant” plays produced during the yea them very badly acted. Our “significant” producing organizations, housed in tiny . Most ¢ theatres, have done valuable service in bringing to light jal managers would not have been able to read, let alone produce. We should be grateful for this. But it is too bad that, with a good ‘script in hand, these pioncers do not see that it is several important dramas which the commer worth nothing so far as public education is concerned if it is going to beat on the tone or amateurish over-emphasis. An actor, in order to interpret the new spirit of the theatre, must have other resources at his command than a love of that theatre and an ability to live on a small salary. These qualities help, and adience’s ears in droning mono- sive an air of sincerity which is disarming, but it would be ors into the bargain. so much better if they were good ac S| UT there, we are getting cross, and we swore that we would never get cross again, especially at actors. They have enough trouble, poor devils, trying to cope with that bane of the American theatre—the audience. It was a perfectly dandy season, and every one took his part just splendidly. Robert Benchley. comicbooks.com