New Plays

The Virgin of Bethulia. The Bible is primarily theatrical in many of its parables. Also the essence of an elaborate church service touches within its watchers the same chord which responds to climaxes behind the footlights. Of late years, the Theatre has drifted away from the color and the sounding mystery of ancient pageants in the playhouse. The Miracle revived the fashion; The Virgin of Bethulia attempts, in a less imposing manner, to continue the revival.

It is exceedingly doubtful if this attempt will be of much avail since the new play drags interminably. It is fairly well played by McKay Morris as Holofernes, and rather badly played by Julia Hoyt, who was somewhat recklessly given the part of Judith.

The story is of Judith* and was originally concentrated for the stage by Henri Bernstein. It argues that the quest of glory can be consummated more surely by service to one's people than by love. Though they are in love, Judith kills Holofernes in his tent. There is all the declamation and gaily colored scenery requisite to sustain these hours of argument and action. The general combination is conducive to little except definite apathy.

The Wild Duck. Ibsen/- has become altogether too much a playwright of the printed page in our theatre. His works are rather reverenced than revived. Accordingly, it is immensely satisfying to see The Wild Duck live again in a conspicuously competent production of The Actors' Theatre. It provides an evening of exacting search through the mind and the emotions. This search is rewarded by one of the two or three most satisfying experiences in the season's schedule.

The Wild Duck is a symbol--a bird that, when wounded by the hunter, digs itself in the weeds and dies. The hunter of the play is a young idealist who comes to a middleclass, satisfied household and splinters their illusions. In the hope that he may lead them to a newer, finer life of honesty, he tells the husband that his wife has been another's mistress. The father shuns his child, fearing he may not really be her father. The child kills herself. The point of the play is put in the mouth of the old doctor in attendance. Roughly it is this: "Never spoil a human being's illusions about himself or his condition. He will go mad or die." A violent controversy has arisen over the acting of Warburton Gamble in the part of the father of the house. He made him a silly "showoff" type and as such drew a perfect picture. Objectors swear that there was a deeper thrust of idealistic sincerity to the part as Ibsen wrote it. If this is your reading of the play, Mr. Gamble was exceedingly inept. Blanche Yurka, Tom Powers and a newcomer named Helen Chandler are three perform ers that fully merit the oft misused word "scintillating." Such a combination of ideas and interpretation is indeed rare in the playgoer's experience.

Night Hawk flew a week or two too late. To the casual observer, it seemed produced solely to appeal to the masses which have been responding to the greasy publicity given The Good Bad Woman and her scarlet sisters. The girl in the case is a streetwalker who obtains rejuvenation from a doctor (through an operation) on the plea that she will be good. Later, she tries to marry the doctor's brother. The doctor tells professional secrets pretty much all over the climax. Mary Newcomb's acting was altogether too good for such dramatic flimsy.

--See Judith, one of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. In the English Apocrypha, it is placed between Tobit and the apocryphal additions to Esther. It was probably written in the second century B. C. /-Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), Norwegian poet- dramatist, has exerted a tremendous influence on the modern Theatre. In the 19th Century, at the height of the Romantic period of the Drama, he wrote plays noted for their realism, their consummate mastery of stage technique-- A Doll's House, The Pillars of Society, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Ghosts, Rosmcrsholm, Hcdda Gabler, The Master- builder, Peer Gynt (for which his friend Grieg wrote the music) are his best-known. His fearless protests against existing social conventions occasioned a great furor at the time of their original production, have since been in the repertoires of the most famed actors of Europe and the U. S.