New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-02-08
Mews of the Play World
Strindberg's "Comrades" Per-
formed in German at
the Irving Place

In Strindberg's Comrades" which
was played in German at the Irving
Place Theatre last night, woman ap-
pears only as the destroyer OF man,
except in the commonplace relations
which obtain between Lieutenant
Starck and his wife. Those who read
Strindberg specifically will be quick
to cry "misogynist" and 20 dismiss the
play as an outpouring from the mind
of one to whom normal relations with
women were impossible. But the play
was written during the happiness of
Strindberg's first marriage. 1t is not
misogynist's play, although the
heroine of it is more than ordinarily
hateful because the dramatist has en-
phasized certain feminine traits with
which he develops his theme.
Briefly, the subject of the play is the
awakening of a sentimentalst who has
localized his passion for an mr.
INSCRIPTIONS woman to such an ex-
tent that he believes it possible to
live with her on terms of absolute
equality and comradery. II is only
when he realizes that she has been be-
traying him, not with other men, but
merely in financial matters, in her art
and for her own ambition that he cuts
the ties which have bound them. lie
has been supporting her, paying for
her artistic studies, for her very
models, BY painting pot-boillng
sketches. Both are contestants for
admission to the Academy, and Bertha
persuades Axel to undertake a visit
to an artist friend on the jury to in
trigue for the acceptance of her paint.
ing. 1t is a proceeding to which his
nature is foreign, but, persuaded BY
her charm, he goes.
He has changed the numbers on their
pictures, so that her offering appears
under his name, his painting under
hers. Her triumph when his picture
is rejected and hers accepted, her
domineering eXultance over her SUI
premscy, convince him that his wife
has not loved him, that the comradery
which he persuaded himself had eX-
listed was only her excuse for making
a dupe of him.
II is only when he shows himself to
be stronger than she, indifferent to her
sent mental and sexual appeals, that she
loves him, and then only in an endeavor
TO make him again her dupe. There are
terrible moments in the play, one OF
them the meeting of DR.. Ostermark
with the woman he had divorced twenty
years before. She had lied. drunk,
brought up her daughters by second
marriage to be women notorious in the
Russian capital. and he meets her with
the trembling of man confronted by
the woman he had once loved. II is in
this scene and in the scenes in which
Axel becomes conscious of his relation
ship with Bertha that the dramatist has
loudly struck the tone of hate between
men and women, theme which is pres
ent throughout the entire play.
The play is not entirely cynical as
to the relations of men and women. 1t
is most biting for the sentimentalist,
bo.h the kind who idealizes his passion
and the kind who fsncies that an equal
ity is possible where the woman is
willing to trade on her sexual charm
only. As the dramatist says through
one Of his characters, so long as there
are two sexes there will be antag
oniCms.
The German company has given bet
ter performances than this one. Strind-
berg did not write the first act bore,
though Rudolf Christians contrived to
make IL one with theatrical manner
isms, affected drawl and slow playing.
The acting improved somewhat there
after, and Ernst Hoznagel as DR.. 0s-
tcrmark, and Clairette Clair as his
divorced wife, had moments of intense
force in the third act.