Airy And Hairy Drama

Milne and O'Neill Contribute Unusual Plays to Animate the Season on Broadway

HEYWOOD BROUN

DRAMATISTS of our clay seem to be intent upon making life more exclusive. One is put up for membership at an early age or preferably before. The dues are heavy and the by-laws strict. The generous movement to admit women, sponsored by Shaw and Ibsen, has recently lost momentum. The present practice is to tolerate only the young ones and to restrict them to certain days and limited parts of the building.

Among doormen, Eugene O'Neill is probably the strictest. To him heartbreak, monotony, and the smell of salt water are all sufficient grounds for tossing offenders out of the club house. Consider, for instance, the case of Yank Smith, better known as the Hairy Ape. O'Neill contends that he does not belong because his crude and ugly power is not sightly to a mincing miss from the first cabin. A. A. Milne seemed to us almost as finicky about the right to existence when he allowed one of his female characters to consider seriously the possibility of resigning, because she had reached the advanced age of thirty-eight, and felt that there was nothing more before her.

O'Neill's Violent Speech

THE HAIRY APE is not up to the best of O'Neill in our opinion, although it has glints of brilliance. We think that its artistic limitation lies in the fact that it strikes an attitude rather than creating a mood. Naturally, no artist .may justly be judged by what his friends say about him, but we feel that O'Neill is not altogether misrepresented in those paeans in which The Hairy Ape is hailed as a "fearless play." Just what it is that an artist may be supposed to fear we do not know. But nevertheless we feel that O'Neill is defying somebody or other. The practice of keeping a thumb at your nose curtails vision a little, and still more of life is shut off if the habit of wiggling the fingers becomes fixed.

Yank ought to be able to curse much better than he has been allowed to do in 7'he Hairy Ape. To O'Neill, the oaths have seemed part of the finger wiggling, rather than an an altogether easy and natural form of expression.

"This," he seems to say, "is going to be terrific." The timid auditor may even be frightened into putting his fingers to his ears, and then the worst that happens is that somebody is called "a lousy boob." This is dinner table banter rather than stokehold violence. At any rate it is easy to think up things far more searing than any which have crept into the play. When one hears Yank climbing up adjectives hand over hand he cannot help expecting that he is lifting himself up to some noun adequate in reproach. To be sure, O'Neill would not be allowed to use many of the words which would come rightfully into a stokehold. Probably the compromise which he has made of seeming fury and fundamental timidity of talk is inevitable and excusable. Still, it is not altogether fearless.

It is exciting to listen to a play in which the author is raging at society and making faces at it. We all know that the world is not right, and of course we enjoy hearing this fact brought to its attention. The Hairy Ape, in effect, says to existence, "Hold on a minute, I've got something to say to you. Sit down. (Here there is the business of feinting with the right.) Now listen. You, you, you.!"

The blank is not filled in. We knew that O'Neill was furiously angry at the world about something, but we never quite caught what it was. It is only fair to say that a great deal of the revolutionary feeling of the world is just as blind as this. It does not fight for something, but only against something. Moreover, O'Neill has carefully selected an inarticulate person as his protagonist. But it seems to us that even an inarticulate person may make himself understood. We did not understand Yank Smith, the Hairy Ape. The incident upon which his ignition depends is to us altogether inadequate and mysterious.

We see him at the beginning of the play roaring at all weak livered associates in the stokehold. He has fashioned a philosophy of life satisfactory to himself. In spite of his "deys" and "deses," it is a rather subtle philosophy and an entirely coherent one. In fact it is not unlike the vision of Carl Sandburg in Smoke and Steel. Yank has identified himself with the driving forces of the world. He is strength and power. He is the thing which propels the ship. He is steel itself. He "belongs."

Yank's Philosophy

NOW this is not a very promising beginning for a play designed to interpret the soul of the proletariat. The language may have in it all the earth in the world and yet the concept is surely a literary one. Indeed, the language of the stoker does not wholly escape from this charge. Y'ank's "I belong," for instance, is surely a phrase from a person who has messed about with language. Reviewers have had a tendency to overestimate O'Neill's ability to reproduce the talk of everyday folk. A close examination of the written text of The Hairy Ape shows that this talk does not begin to have the exact observation which animates dialogue written by Ring Lardner. It is correct enough, but it has none of the occasional surprising twists and turns which come into the speech of the common man. It is a composite picture rather than a record of the talk of any given individual with a certain number of differentiations which mark him off a little from the rest. Yank Smith is not so much a stoker on a liner as any stoker on a liner.

To Yank, in the stokehold, comes the mincing miss from the upper deck. She hears him curse and looks at the ugly bulk of him. "Filthy beast," she cries, startled, and thereupon faints.

Immediately she faints, Yank's world falls about his ears. His old concept of his place in life no longer satisfies him. He is in revolt, and the rest of the play concerns his effort to find compensation. But why should Yank have been so disturbed because the young woman could not abide the sight of him and .was frightened into a faint Did not all this fit perfectly into his visuali zation of himself as the symbol and sub stance of power? He was a god too mighty for mortal eyes to look upon. We know few men who would not be entirely satisfied with themselves if in their progress through the world they left a trail of terrified and fainting women behind them. We understand that in a late revision of the play the young woman does not faint. Perhaps this is a more persuasive version. Con tempt might be calculated to account for the revolt of Yank much better than fear.

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With the revolt of the chief character, there comes a sudden shift in the mood of the play. It would be absurd to say that there is any inherent technical crime in switching a mood without warning. The only test is whether or not it works. Our own wits are a little too slow to follow. The general tone of the scenes in the stokehold is natur alistic, and accordingly we did not quite get the hang of things when the play turned fantastical. It was particularly hard for us because the fantasy seemed somewhat limited. We should have understood better if the switch had been more loudly trumpeted by the scenic designers. They have their little joke but it is too subtle for the theatre~ In the window of a Fifth Avenue shop we see "Monkey fur-$2,000," and in an other some tinsel jewelry labeled "$10,000." But if the playwright had wanted it to be a real display~ of jewelry, we would have allowed him to use the same tinsel properties. Like most theatregoers, we are generous in that way. As for monkey fur, our technical knowledge is too slight to permit us to gather any hint from this device.

To us, the most effective parts of the play are in the scenes in the prison and the I. W. W. headquarters. These are both vivid and eloquent. Still, if we were an I. W. W. member, we would feel justified in resenting O'Neill's ap parent contention that the organization has become doctrinaire. The final scene, in which Yank goes into the cage of the hairy ape and is strangled by him, seems to us to carry the notion too far. It takes it to its extreme logical conclu sion and human invention ought to stop short of such exactitude. A little logic does no harm in art, but more than that brings the blight of slickness.

We do not think that The Hairy Aje is a success, but it represents an attempt to handle a difficult problem. More than that, it achieves one of the greatest moments which the stage has seen this season. There is nothing in the theatre quite so thrilling as the scene in which Yank and his cohorts feed the furnaces of the rapacious ocean liner.

Mr. Mime's First Act

PROFESSORS of the art of playmak-. ing ought to be able to get an entire lecture out of The Truth About Bk~yds. Perhaps they will use it as an example of the risk with which a dramatist bur-. dens himself when he writes a great first act. He is in a parlous plight unless he has two more great acts up his sleeve. A. A. Milne has neglected to make this provision. His new comedy begins with an act which must be j.ust about as perfect and delightful as any thing in modern English comedy. Not only is it charming, but it has managed to tell pretty much the whole story with which the evening is concerned. The rest of the play is pretty good, but that is not good enough to seem any thing but second rate when taked on to something masterly. Mix re duced to being sentimental and whim sical and other horrible things in order to round out the evening. If he had been completely the artist, he would have read the first act of The Truth About Blayds and promptly died. We doubt if he will ever find a more fitting achievement upon which to make an exit.

Still, in that case, the fragment might never have found its way to the 5tage, which would have left us all the poSrer, and in particular, we should have ipissed the extraordinary work of 0. P. Heggie. It would be hard for an actor not to do a great deal with the role. The en trance devised~ for. the character is of the sort which stars hope for only when they begin to. play in Heaven. Every body talks about Blayds from the mo ment the curtain goes up. Ever~body is on the stage waiting for him as the big doors swing open and he is wheeled in. But let it be said for 0. P. Heggie that he made all these preparations seem no more than was due to the perform ance which he gave once he came upon the stage. .

The Rest

THE rest of recent activities can be dismissed more lightly. Marjorie Rambeau does some amusing clowning in The Goldfish, but the play is heavy handed comedy with ridiculous senti mental interludes.

Eddie Cantor may be among the truly inspired comedians of our day. He is already furiously funny in the big hodge podge at the Winter Garden, which is now called, Maiee it Snappy. We have the feeling that he might be even more than that. Hehas a sense of pace which marks him as one among ten thousand performers, and a countenance of extra ordinary gloom. He knows how to do things with it. It would be interesting to see just what he could do without the help of a single chorus girl or the backing of a symbolic ballet.