New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-01-30
Gold Dust and Foreign
Substances in Plays of
PrOvincetOWn
FREUD ENLISTED FOR
THE SAKE OF FUN
cho-Analysis and the
Sea Best Factors in an
Uneven Series
By HAYWOOD BROUN

| AS We uUutISldlu IT, al NNHNAfHN'N
is something which turns cinders into
gold dust or explodes with fearful
crash and odor. In this sense the
Provincetcwn Players have established
= most efficient experimental theatre:
Some of the explosions can be heard
even when the plays are read miles
away from Macdougall Street.
There is only little gold dust. but
then there never is much gold dust
The Provincetown plays seem TO have
been written by a group OF remark
ABLY divergent ability. One would 60
far TO escape such a play as Free
dom" or to find such q one as "Irihes.
Since Susan Glaspell's close knit
drama is now at the Comedy 1t IS per
hans fitting to exclude it from the
scope of this article. but there is no
excluding Susan Glaspell. Suppressed
Desires" which she wrote in collaoo-
ration with George Cram Cook, is cas-
ilv the best play in the present Prov
incetown repertory. The skill OF the au-
tbors lies in the wide appeal which they
have Given a special subject. There
are those who have never heard OF
Freud or of psycho-analysis, but the
humor of the play can be discovered
without the aid of a compass, or
complex, for that matter. For instance,
there is Mabel who when informed
Of the fearful testers arising IN the
soul wherever the living Libido IS IN
conflict with petriied moral CODES;
replies bravely and stoutly; i don
believe they have them IN Chleago'
|, The story Of the enthusiast whose
belief in psyche analysis is turheu
against herself with telling humorous
| effect. has been developed with rare
dramatic irony. No play in the Prov
incetown series has half the accurate
| observation which Suppressed De-
aires" possesses. This is due IN part
TO the skill of the authors and again
to the fact that they have had the Wis
dom 10 select q theme from the daily
life Of the people about them.
Different in key, but second in in
terest. comes Bound East for Car
diff" bv Eugene G. ONeill. Here is
a plav which owes more to the crea-
ton of mood and atmosphere than 10
any fundamentally interesting idea or
sudden twist of plot. Bound East Tor
! Cardiff" merely shows the death OF a
sailor in the forecastle of British
tramp on a foggy night. The appeal
lies in the successful approximation OF
true talk in such speech as the one
where the dying sailor fretfully com
plains: "Why should il be a rotten
night like this, with that damn whistle
BLOWN and people snorin' all around ?
| / wish the stars was out, and the moon,
too; | cd lie out on deck and look at
them, and it'd make it easier to go
! somehow"
Approximation, rather than faithful
reproduction. must be the aim of the
[ drymatist who deals with the lOoser
talking sort of folk. Obviously, it is i'm
possible to set down the conversation Of
sailors word for word. And yet it IS
possible TO make their talk sound real,
as in the speech we have quoted, or
unreal. as in the scene where DriScoll,
"a red-haired giant. with the battered
features of a prizefghter," refers to
enc of his boon companions as a
"divil-may rake av a man" This
is false, not so much because the
phrase is obviously ~one which would
not be heard from the mouth of a
sailor, but because the spirit is false.
Such slips are few in the play. Eu-
gene O'Neill has written several short
plays about the sea, and IS probably
familiar with that subject. At any rate,
he strikes a rich vein, the old Kipling
vein, in the bit where the dying man
ard his pal null over the times they
used 10 have. "The moving pictures in
BARRACKS? Some class to them, d'yuh
remember" And they talk Of sounds
in Paseo Colon, and smells in La Plata,
rows i'm Singapore and sprees in Port
Said. to say nothing Of the fight on a
dock at Cape Town, when knives were
drawn.
Appropriately enough, there is a
touch of sentiment about the pleasant
spoken barmaid at the Red Stork, in
Cardiff. Perhaps il is of her that Yank
is thinking just before he dies, when
he gulps at the dipper Of water and
gasps: 81 wish this was pint OF
! beer"
For the rest, the Provincetown Plays
are less sturdy. They are concerned
with fearsome, tedious talks between
husband and wife, as in Enemies" in
which Meth Boyce and Hutchins Hap
good set their characters at work to de-
termine whether the emotion they feel
is love or hate. The emotion of the
audience is much more readily deter
mined.
There is 1.-THE Two Sons" by Meth
Boyce, little experiment in decadence,
in which the failure may be sensed
readily enough, although there is no
noise to the explosion.
Floyd Dell's play, king Arthur's
SoX," has just a minute or so Of dra-
matte interest, but he throws away his
chance by tedious and pfIling begin
ming. Jack Reeds Freedom" has that
curious unhumorus quality of product
in which the attempt to be amusing
has been too arduous.
OF plays such as Lima Beans" and
/ "The Game" in which an attempt has
been made "to synthesize decoration,
costume. speech and action into one
mood" il is perhaps unfair to comment
simply on the basis Of a reading kuowl-
| edge. Undoubtedly we would be un-
fair even il VIC had seen them. Some
how we were always little irritated
by those affairs in which THE speech
and action Of the players is used as
the plastic element in the whole unified
convention
Eugene O'Neill has tried rather
novel but not altogether successful eS-
pertinent in Before Breakfast" but "
is little more than a stunt. sauce
Tor the Emperor" by John Chaplin
Mosher. is an attempt 70 interpret his
tory somewhat after The fashion OF
Philip Moellcr. II is mildly amusing,
but IL lacks the tempo Of the best work
of the playwright from further up
town.
JOHN D. AIDS OGDEN FUND