Life — October 26, 1928 — page 19: what you’re looking at

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

Tired and Out of Patience ProressionaL theatregoers took an awful beating dur- ing the week of October 8th when “Faust” and “The Light of Asia” opened on successive nights. Either one of these behemoths would have been tiresome enough to fill one man’s quota of ennui for an entire season. And yet hardly had we straightened our legs out and got our back into place from “Faust” when, the next night, we must go and watch Walter Hampden in charades lasting "way into the night. We are definitely through with the Earnest Theatre now. Willard Mack is our boy. We are surprised and disappointed in the Theatre Guild. One expects this sort of thing from Mr. Hampden who, so long as he can dress up and recite, doesn’t seem to care much about such things as pace and interest. But we have never before been constantly and aggressively bored at a Theatre Guild production. We have never seen a Theatre Guild production that was inexpert before. We don’t know what ¢o think. Of course, there being no State law making it obligatory for the Guild or for anyone else to produce Goethe's “Faust,” the primary mistake was probably in selecting this great big bouncing poem as an opening bill. It would seem that even a reading of the thing in German 2b would have convinced anyone with a knowledge of the theatre that, for acting purposes, “Samson Agonistes” or ‘“Para- dise Lost” would be preferable. Just what they thought they were going to do with it is, and probably always will be, a mystery. Whatever it was, they didn’t by Robert Benchley We can look with a little more indul- gence on Mr. Hampden’s turkey entitled “The Light of Asia.” We all know Mr. Hampden’s weakness for unbecoming cos- tumes and blank verse and when we go to his theatre we deliberately let ourself in for whatever we get. We say this, we who saw his “Cyrano” eight times and bawled loudly each time, but we have a sneaking suspicion now that maybe Rostand had something to do with that. For, much as we hate to enrage Mr. Hampden’s public, we must record our belief that he is, aw fond, a ham actor. Nobody but a ham actor would select such an uninspired series of sentences as Georgina Jones Walton has woven to- gether in “The Light of Asia” simply because it gave him an opportunity to do his stuff. (When we tell you that “The Light of Asia” was originally written for performance in a Western theosophical colony, we have perhaps given sufficient tip-off.) It is supposed to be an account ot how Buddha happened to find out that he was Buddha, but the original Gautama must have possessed qualities that Mr. Hampden somehow fails to get across or he never would have had so many fol- lowers. People might follow Mr. Hampden’s Buddha, but only to make remarks from a distance. If Mr. Hampden is going to insist on rigging himself up, he really ought to pick costumes that suit him a litle better. He looks awful. Ir our two great agencies for improv- ing the Drama are going to go as bad as the Guild and Mr. Hampden have done, where are we to look for refined enter- tainment?. The Guild has been clinking “Faust” about in its pocket for over a year now; so they must have thought it was pretty good. Even Goethe could have told them better—and, as a matter of fact, did. But, after last season's series of super-successes, and the many seasons before when we went to a Guild open- ing confident that we were going to get something worth sitting through, we are inclined to hope that “Faust” was just one of those mistakes that we all make. So, as soon as the subscription season is over, and all the little subscribers have found out for themselves what it is to go through hell, we will all bound back to the next offering with renewed eagerness, for anything, they do will be better than “Faust.” As for the Hampden Theatre, however, we admit ourself licked. Unless “*Cyrano” is performed there again, we will establish a deadline at Fifty-Ninth St. beyond which we cannot go without being shot. This will not interfere with Mr. Hampden’s future success in the least and it will save us a great deal of itching. Comparep with these serious offerings, Miss Irene Bordoni in ‘*Paris" is practically heaven. In an ordinary week it would not have been so good. A more hack- neyed play would have been impossible to find (and apparently a great deal of hunt- ing was done and a great deal of bother taken to disentangle it from the hundreds of other stories exactly like it) and there are moments in it when we had some idea of going back and seeing if “Faust” really was as bad as we thought. But these moments were not when Miss Bordoni was on (or, at least, not many of them) and certainly not during the sing- ing of Mr. Cole Porter's songs. It is Mr. Porter who contributes most to “Paris” and it should be a matter for local re- joicing that he has decided to return to America and write songs for the public instead of for a little group of fortunate ones around a piano in Paris. If “Paris” were a better play, the in- troduction of Irving Aaronson's entire band (who just happened to drop into the apartment for an informal rehearsal and were, by great good luck, shown up) would be more of an intrusion. As it ts, nobody cares much what happens to the story, as everything that could happen to it happened years ago, and so the “*Com- manders” help out considerably by their ambidextrous efforts. We stoppep in for a moment at the last act of Mr. Cohan’s musical comedy, “Billie,” to see what it was like. As we entered we heard one character saying: “Won't you sit down?” and another char- acter replying: ‘0, thanks, I’ve been ing all day and I'm tired of sitting down.” So we turned right around and got out before the door had closed on our entrance. We may go back and we may not. Maybe by now Mr. Cohan won't let us go back. The Confidential Guide to current plays will be found on page 26. comicbooks.com