Some Aspects

Some Aspects

Good Plays, Good Props, Good Acting--The Year in Review Now that they have started putting linen slipcovers over the theatre seats, and critics everywhere have made out lists of the five or ten best performances they ever saw--now that most people are beginning to prefer to stay at home with the electric fan and a highball rather than perspire before the most thrilling of theatrical performances--now, in fact that summer is icumen in and the cut-rate ticket agencies are ready to cry " Cuckoo! " at their more expensive brethren--it is not out of order to consider some aspects of the season now moribund. The outstanding fact would seem to be, at first sight, the unquestionable success of an English dramatist, William Shakespeare, upon the American stage. New York has seen Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet break all their previous long-run records for America--besides a good production of The Merchant of Venice, an expensive, if unsuccessful, one of At, You Like It, and productions of The Comedy of Errors and King Lear. Of course none of these performances can be compared to, say, Abie's Irish Rose as a solid box-office attraction--but all in all Mr. Shakespeare did well. The season has also seen exceptional acting. Leaving aside the visit of the Moscow Art Theatre and its demonstration of what gorgeous teamwork a repertory company can display--Jane Cowl as Juliet, Jeanne Eagels in Rain, Alice Brady in Zander the Great, Katharine Cornell and Haidee Wright in Will Shakespeare, Helen Menken in Seventh Heaven--on the masculine side, John Barrymore's Hamlet, Rudolph Schildkraut's performance in the God of Vengeance, Glenn Hunter's " Merlon" in the young-man-by-that-name of the Movies--these are only a random few selected from a great number of striking individual successes. For the Friends of the American Drama there are promising retrospects: in particular, Philip Barry, John Howard Lawson, Lulu Vollmer among the novices; Icebound, the Pulitzer prize play by the reformed Mr. Owen Davis--a solid if unspectacular contribution; The Adding Machine, with its satire, gloom and power; tangled recollections of a score of interesting things--the robots--James Barton's dancing--the lace-ballet in the Follies--the Texas Nightingale--the war scene in The Insect Comedy -- Stanislavsky -- the unfortunate " 49ers "--Cyril Maude --et cetera. At all events it was a rich and entertaining feast. S. V. B.