The Washington herald., 1920-09-27
Poli's-SMom.S
By EARLE DORSEY.

Rachel Barton Buffers second
play, Mom," should be postponed
until it become apparent whether
MON" Is really a play or merely
an enthusiastic attempt to glorify
the idea of motherhood.
There is a bare possibility that
somewhere underlying the maze of
production difficulties that harass
MON" at the present time, there
may be some basic point of ex-
treme delicacy that has not yet been
made effective, but one inclines
more readily to the belief that
Nom" is little more than a string
of episodes without dramatic force
or point, all aiming at the general
idea that motherhood Is a spiritual
force that can work great good in
the lives of children come to ma
turity. Somehow, one senses an
immature and hoydenish enthusi-
asm on the part of the playwright,
altogether divorced from a careful
scrutiny of dramatic cause and er-
fects. Certainly. in its present
form. MON" is a play without
point or climax.
At no place in the story does Miss
Butler appear to be working from
a definite angle of treatment. She
trills along, in girlish fashion,
showing the mother of an every
day flock as the handspring of their
happiness and being, breathing
forth an abandon of rapture over
the mission of motherhood, just as
though motherhood was an alto
gether new and just-discovered
quality in human affairs.
Such treatment of a subject, of
course, amounts to sheer platitude,
like writing a play to prove that
mothers will occasionally sacrifice
their own happiness for those they
love or that mothers have been
known to sit up all night with an
ailing child at the sacrifice of their
own rest. This has always been clear
to the most of us and personally.
one sees great dramatic values in a
mere general treatment of the idea
The Cutters are in a high state
of excitement, with their boy and
girl leaving for college and finish
ing school, and their oldest daughter
departing for New York to live with
her husband. There is a motherless
chap who loves the married daugh-
ter but his chief trouble is his loss
of a mother. That's the hrst act,
and the second act shows the bride
and her husband of four months al
most at the parting of the ways.
The girl is about to let some other
gentleman pay her bills when
mother accomplishes her first big
mission by coincidently telephoning
her to be a good girl. An imitation
of an unseen speakers voice in
faulty telephone receiver adds moth
ing to the dramatic selfevidence of
pointless second act.
In act three, it is Benny's turn
( at salvation. Benny is very i'll OF
pneumonia in the third act and the
doctor says his chances are even
, until mother comes. In quite mat
ter-of-fact fashion. she nurses him
back to health in an act more alro-
pathic than all of Mrs. FleXners
very allopathic All Souls Eve"
! Down comes the curtain again on
pointless interval.
In the fourth act, the devotion or
the motherless youth for the ideal
of motherhood causes him to write
check for Bennys education when
it is clear thai Benny must study
and nothing more when going
through college. There's a wisp of
inConsequential love interest in the
love affair of the same motherless
youth, with the younger daughter
of the Cutter family, but all one
gets from that is the idea that he
couldn't have been much in love
with the older and married sister
in act one
Production work on the piece is
manifestly immature. The direc-
tton is raw and unfinished and sew
eral of the Characterizations are
STACEY and not logical. The COM
pany betrays miscasting. though
George D. Parker gives the bes,
acting of the piece in a third-ac
scene as a physician. Incidentally,
. that scene contains quite-too-
vivid reproduction of influenza hor-
rors. but paradOXically. it is the
best bit of the play, from the drama
standpoint.
Lorin Raker. as the impetuous
youth of the Cutter family. is very
frequently funny when his lines
do not render him silly Minnie
Dupree gives an acceptable char
acterization as the mother, but the
part is very corpulent. Helen Weir,
with much of Helen Hayes ingenu-
BUSINESS, is the cutie of the piece
and very cute cutie at that