New-York tribune., 1921-01-31
By
Heywood Broun

plays. In David Liebovitz we have-so
it seems to me--a writer who writes
Of American life at first hand. He has
lived in strange, lonely places which
New York knows not, and he has had
either the courage OR the naIvet6 to
write of the people these places Gre
ate, not in terms that go on Broadway
but as he has found sthem to be. Re-
ligious exaltation with the faint of
the prayer-meeting, love Of life and
sense of sin all rather absurdly
mixed, as they are so absurdly and
pitifully. and tragically mixed.
"Preposterous though it may seem,
there are people who are sensitive to
the night. I~suppose they should show
this sensitiveness in highfalutin' terms
long respected in the theater; to speak
of the pigs and calves-Pigs? Calves :?
But that is for rough-stuf comedy.
The house shook with laughter-and so
did the papers. That laugh is not 60
ing to help American drama bit. It
is not going to do any good to any sin
gle person who is trying to write
American plays. Fcs here is. not the
slightest chance Of our having decent
plays until we can write imaginatively
about common things-until poetry
can be in terms of the pigs il it wants
to be.
Doubtless you will agree with me
and say you ere Strong for beauty as
shown through the calves and the pigs,
but that for you the beauty did not
come through and that you were left
with nothing but these somewhat e.-
traneous animals. am unable to COM
prehend how when it came through SO
purely to me it did not come through at
all to any Of you. And it Is precisely
what did come through to me that
forces rae, much against my will, to
write this letter.
81 think this play has faults and
weaknesses, that everything it has it
might have more surely and more in
tensely. But do think it is written
by dramatist who is also a poet.
| think it has imagination, and that it
has failed because it has strangeness.
Say what we may, here in America we
do not like strangeness. We. want to
feel right at home and ever SO sure of
ourselves every moment. At any rate,
we do not want strangeness when it
is about America. That is really .ap-
palling and rather menacing. Let the
strangeness remain in Russia,
"But all Of America is not as COM
monplace as New York. In far away
beautiful places of this country are
3eople made strange by beauty, which
does not quite fow into their lives.
have known these people in Iowa, in
Colorado, in Idaho, on Cape Cod, and
knowing them recognize them in this
play John Hawthorne and feel that this
| young dramatist is most authentic
1 when-looking at it conventionaliy-
! he would seem to know least about
what he Is doing.
| "When the curtain went down on the
I first act felt it went down on a re-
markable love scene, scene In which
new elements were used religious Ia
naticism and passion freshly In con-
fict. The way Laura would take refuge
in her religious feeling, moment later
only to use this very thing as bridge
to the love she couldn't keep away
FROM think that scene is subtle and
has power. The conflict IN this torment
ed creature, who in the end has to de-
strcy the man she loves, how can it be
| that after months of made-to-sell
drama you can sit before this and feel
| no new and living thing? A sensitive
/ play has been crudely snuffed out.n
Rival Ref,ycea