New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-01-05

What has become of the feeling
rrevalent a few seasons ago among
those wistful ones in whom hope is so
oas;lv aroused, that the great Amer
lean play was being intubated in the
drama courses of our American uni
.~rs,y,es: the academic stream that
sent forth Sheldon and kincaid has APP
parently gone dry-and even the de-
termined optimist has rclinquished the
conviction that its flow will ever
amount to more than an occasional
tricklc
Perhaps. seeking persistently for com
fort. one may find it in the fact that
an unusual number of new playwrights
have made their appearance in the last
six months. The Indebtedness of their
source is irritating to one VINO wants
something concrete to grasp. They are
not the products of group thinking, or
centred consciousness. or even a gath
cred tendency in the theatre. They
come from divers sources. Three have
come out OF the theatre itself, one
comes from the movies, one is Mid
die Western lawyer one is a woman of
the dreaded thinking" class, and Of
we include Rairnsfather), one has come
cut of the war.
Ii is true. no marked frightening of
vitality has followed this infusion of
now blood. The general level of the
half seasons production seems as usual.
The hope lies not so much in the effect
of the infusion as in the admission it
implies. 1t is by no means a whole
hearted admission that the old plays
arc inadequate-which is why the work
of some OF the new playwrights is so
much like that of the old ones-but at
any rate it is hard wrung admission
from a system constitutionally opposed
TO experiment that experiment is neces-
sary.
1t is hard to anticipate what conces
sons are to be wrung from the powers
Who administer the law of supply and
demand in the theatre through the fact
thatthe three most successful plays in
town arc the result of this experimental
impulse. "Lightnn'," Three Faces East"
and "The Better Ole" arc all first
plays. OF course, the pessimsts can
argue that no great amount of risk was
involved in giving these three their
chance-theiT commercial success was in
a sense foreshadowed. The stuff of
"Ligh thin" is something with which
we are familiar and that is guaranteed
non-explosive on our American stage;
the precocious grip of the technique oe
melodrama makes "Three Faces East"
also stape and the production cf "The
Better ole" was safeguarded by its
huge success in London, and by the sue
cess of the cartoons which preceded it.
But out OF this seasons welter OF
failures there rises the fact that a
London success means nothing here
The Better ole" succeeds because Of
its robust truth. and there's q larger
grain of truth than rural drama has
usually yielded up in "Lightnin.
HSH SuCNESS 10, iiiNI~N, no NOtiii'i'eA
ton that anything new is in process of
eYoution-but they arc possible APP
proachments.
By far the most interesting figure of
the group of new playwrights is Rita
Wellman, and here the pessimists
have it all their own way when
they say that "The Gentle Wife"
shows the least likelihood of
meeting the recognition that Light
MIN" received. The tang OF its bitter
truth is bit too sharp. Even the re-
viewers, who are supposed to have
stronger stomachs than managers, or
what is misunderstood to be the public,
quarreled with the dose. Yet her play
mas the fine. tonic quality so rare on