Anniversary

Last week in Manhattan attention was called to a 15th anniversary, one which was not given over exclusively to the commemoration of bygones, but on the contrary crowded with hopes for the future. It was tangibly marked by an ambitious program in which the Cleveland Orchestra under Conductor Nikolai Grigorovitch Sokolov and a company of players were to present as symphonic dramas Charles Martin Loeffler's Pagan Poem, Henri Rabaud's Procession Nocturne and Werner Janssen's New Year's Eve in New York.

The anniversary so celebrated was of the establishment of the Neighborhood Playhouse, best known to Manhattanites as the tiny Grand Street Theatre near the Bowery where three and more years ago unusual plays and an annually clever revue (Grand Street Follies) attracted large uptown audiences. The Neighborhood Playhouse in a broader sense represents an idea of Alice and Irene Lewisohn (scionesses of a famed Jewish family), who used to put on plays for children at the Henry Street Settlement. Plays for children grew into plays for grown-ups and in 1915 the Lewisohns built the Grand Street Theatre, opened it with Jephtha's Daughter for which special music was written.

At first the Lewisohn Sisters presented plays only on weekends. During the week cinemas were given for five cents' admission. Short dramatic interludes were introduced in which actors like Albert Carroll and Blanche Talmud, who have since made names for themselves, appeared. Then the Playhouse adopted a regular schedule, won increasing notice with such plays as Granville-Barker's The Madras House, Gibour with Yvette Guilbert, The Little Clay Cart and The Dybbuk.

It was characteristic of the Lewisohn sisters that in 1927, after the success of The Dybbuk, they closed their theatre, announced that they "must pause and consider further developments." They told some that the institutional notion of a theatre (workshops for scenery and costumes had been organized, also a training school for young players) was intruding upon the bigger, finer ideas with which they had begun. Thus vaguely, with idealistic intonation, the sisters have always revealed themselves. Alice, now married to British Artist Herbert Crowley, lives, in Paris. But Irene has carried on in the same lofty spirit. As "the Lewisohn Sisters" she inaugurated the production of "symphonic music with stage and orchestra" for which she has written the scenarios, done the directing.* Out of these experiments grew last week's performances for which Conductor Sokolov provided the musical ideas. Soon Irene hopes to realize an anniversary scheme to include a longer season in Manhattan, road tours for which she has already solicited the cooeperation of leading orchestras, larger opportunities for her theatre school (now limited to after-school classes for children and an intensive two-year course for 16 pupils) and a theatre which will have studios and living quarters for Neighborhood workers.

Personally, Irene Lewisohn is best defined by the unique work she has done and the terms in which she describes it. In appearance she is dark, slight. Her great range of acquaintances numbers Anna Pavlowa, Ramsay MacDonald, Sir Rabindranath Tagore. But few know her well. For most she is the embodiment of her dramatic ideas, a woman of mystery inevitably laden with primitive and Oriental jewelry. She does not at all resemble her famed uncle, Adolf Lewisohn* (copper), a lavish patron of music. At 80, he studies singing and dancing, knows some 200 German lieder which he talks rather than sings, desires, for his entourage, gaiety.

*Among the Lewisohn productions: Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, Bloch's Israel, Debussy's Nuages and Fetes, Borodin's Prince Igor.

*Adolph Lewisohn is interested in other philanthropies than music. Last week in a letter the New York Times he advocated the idea building bungalows for trusted prisoners that they might work out of doors, earn money to repay those they wronged and contribute something to the upkeep of their families.

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