Life — February 11, 1926 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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

old mental “pHs has been a ver I »rocesses. The art theatres have been at it amas, “The Dream Play,” “The Great God at Song,” and not one of them within reach of our lim for ferreting out what a thing rown"” and all about It is pretty dis g We don't feel so upset about not detecting the thread Strindberg’s “The Dre Play We rather doubt tha there is one As we look back on it, the whole th is mercifully hazy and all we remember is that several people med on and off the stage, murmuring. Once, we re member said: “We must have a dance before the plague seemed little enough to ask of life there was an observation: “It's very difficult to be married,” which bre fown the customary round of applause fre m cynics in the dience But the best criticism of “The Dream Play” was over heard in the lobby between the acts, when some one said, y: “L thought that I had read this play, but I find that I haven't.” muild’s “Goat quite ser It is one of Theatre ered a pro- t have got along all right at th ing” if we had not dis te indicating that the play had a symbolic meaning nut the need of detecting symbolism in the proceed ings, the spectator might have a very thrilling time. Cer- could be more exciting than the curtain t 1 nly nothin; the first act, when the normal parents of a monster-child, in their shame since its which they have kept confined irth, discover that it has escaped and is at that moment roaming the ec yside. Nothing could be more thrilling than the cataclysmic second when the shadow of thi Thing is thrown against the sky, creating a perfectly rstandable panic among the | 1 led by Alfred Lunt in his most sinister mood, asantey which results in Then there is an unforgetable picture of a wild pagan led church, contrasted with the scene of deathlike quiet among the charred ruins of a orgy in the desy Mowing rm id his wife (George Gaul and Blanche in which the squire ar Yurka) discover that in their desolation they are at peace for the first. tim And the final curtain, at which Lynn he the mother of a little Fontanne announces that she is to monster, is, to say the least, startling Thus it will be seen that “Goat Se has moments of quite remarkable excitement which the spectator might well thrill he were not having to y hampered by der: “Does this mean that Man is really half-god and beast, or that Europe will never be at peace so k as the Balkans are unsettled? B~ th ire last half c that really worries us, however, is that the Eugene O'Neill's “The Great God We did recog- aining great beauty in tell "was an ui ible jumble to us. nize that here was something coi ts writ someth ng with individual scenes of dramatic power and, so far as we have been able to collect data in thirty-six years of sheltered living, great truth. We could wish that we had got even more from it. But, in the first place, we were oppressed by the feeling that the use of masks to indicate changes and conflicts gi character was not the step forward in dramatic art that it t is supposed to be. We seem to remember equally subtle changes 1 conflicts of character having been expressed in the old-fa ned theatre od acting A and faintly suggest children at Halloween, a fact which simply by does not make for illusion, And if you have not illusion Simply William Harrigan in the theatre, what have yc with a mask on It was when Mr. Harrigan, by havin masks—his own and Rol t to juggle t Keith's—thereby expressing ewildering fact that he was both Billy Brown slightly D hony (a and Dion which was not suspected by Dion's wife until Billy Dic ce time f t to change into s clothes, certainly an inconsistent mi 1 basis for the procee ture of mind ings), that the th’ hand as far as we were concerned, nd matter as ing 1 we were just a little bit irked, possibly at our own obtuser Leona Hogarth, as Dion's wife, was the only one that we understood all the w ugh to the Shoemaker, as Cybel the kept woman, wa ingly clear. If sot quite ¢ y thr , although Anne at times refresh- Samuel Shipman, however, had written a ute teaches the Lord's P: man, we wise boys would be tittering yet. We should like to read “The Great God Brown.” It must be O'Neill's finest reading play. Fifty per cent. of its f scene in which a prost ayer to ure as drama we will mark off against our own The other fift y of dramatic writing which ignores faulty perceptions S to that the per cent. we insist be the fact that, things being as they are, a play must be acted on a stage, by human beings, and for human beings who come into the theatre with no equipment save their eyes and ears and minds, such as they are, quite virgin to hor’s secret intentions. Rob enchley comicbooks.com