Life — January 5, 1928 — page 21: what you’re looking at

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

In German HEN we said a few weeks ago that, as an admirer of Herr Max Reinhardt, we were blind in only one eye, nobody asked us what we meant—so we shall have to tell without being asked. We had rather hoped to have some letters on it. Very well, then: feverish as we are in our excitement over his handling of stage mobs, as, for example, in the titanic scenes in “Dantons Tod,” we have come to the conclusion that, as a director of individual actors, he is just a ham. We timidly formed this opinion as long ago as the time we saw his production of “Juarez and Maxi- ian” (in German, “Jaurez und Maximilian”) in his iidter Theatre in Vienna, a production which as inferior in every way to the one later put on by our own Theatre Guild. But it was not until we saw Scene 2, Act II, of “Dantons Tod” that we were sure enough to advise our clients of the fact. N the second scene of Act II of “Dantons Tod” we sce Lacroix, Hérault Séchelles, Danton and Desmoulins confined in the Conciergerie preparatory to going out tumbril-riding in the Bois. According to the program key, they are having “dark, defiant, melancholy dia- logues.” Dr. Reinhardt’s idea of how four prisoners would deliver dark, defiant, melancholy dialogues is for them to line up like the Avon Comedy Four or the Yale College Quartette and, one by one, sell Liberty Bonds. If an American director had put on a scene like that and had allowed his actors to carry on as Herren Wallburg, Thimig (Hermann und Hans) and Hartmann carried on, he would have been kidded into insensibility. It is all very well to say that this is the Continental tradition, that the play is a roaring Schauspiel in which Nature is arranged for the brasses and cymbals, and that the Century Theatre is a big house. The fact remains that it is ham acting and ham direction, and that goes for most of the other scenes in “Dantons Tod,” with the exception of those magnificent groupings in which Rein- hardt’s genius comes into its own and several dozen Turnvereine are handled as one man—or, even more re- markable, as several hundred men. THE Four Marx Brothers scene was not the only one where Herr Hartmann as Danton did a Robert Man- tell. He had a scene alone with his wife in which, accord- ing to the program, he was indulging in “a nocturne of dreams, visions, assurances.” Until we looked at the pro- gram we got the idea that he was wrestling with himself, like William Kent in “Funny Face.” We must admit, however, that in his big scene before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he made up for everything, for the situation called for just what he had to give—and maybe he didn’t give it! Boy! Bet every now and again a man in black came on the stage and stood very still. And when he spoke the theatre became hushed, the Continental tradition was forgotten, and the necessity for Feuerwerke was shown to be spurious, for his quict voice and casy manner were electric and, speaking or silent, he dominated the stage when he was on. It was Arnold Korff in the réle of St. Just, and we have an idea that, at rehearsals, the Herr Direktor must have warned him that, if he per- sisted in this namby-pamby method of acting, he would have to go out with the road company. Or, if we are do- ing Dr. Reinhardt an injustice and Herr Korff's perform- ance was the result of direction, then all we can say is that Reinhardt has hit on a great idea there and ought to follow it up. Pretty soon then all his actors will be talking like human beings. LL of this is, of course, beside the point, which is that “Dantons Tod” was a thrilling and incompar- able thing while the mobs were at work, and thrilling and incomparable things don’t come to this town very often, NCIDENTALLY, the author of “Dantons Tod” was Georg Biichner, and we understand that more of his works are to be published in this country shortly. By next year he may become a vogue. And if you will go to your safe-deposit box and fish out your back numbers of this page, you will find that along in July, 1925, in our Munich letter, we pleaded with some forward-looking organization in America to try Biichner’s “Woyzeck,” a play which, although written almost a century ago, made our modern psycho-analytical drama look like “The Two Orphans.” We even brought a copy of it back and gave it to the people at the Provincetown Playhouse to read. They not only didn’t produce it, but they didn’t return our copy. Robert Benchley. comicbooks.com