The New York herald., 1922-08-06

Respectability') upon the work OF
Bracco, Butt or Praga, rather than
forward to the new plays of Piran-
dello. But the "Six Characters in
Search of an Author" "Cosi sc vi
pare" ("Right You Are if You
Think So"), Henry w., and the
two new unpublished plays of Piran-
dello, ''yestire gl'ignudi" ("And Ye
Clothed Me > and 'L'uomo Ia
bestia Ia virtu" oman. Beast and
Virtue latter we have seen
in manuscript-show that the germ
of the "grotesque" has a really pow
erful vitality.
The formula with which Pirandello
is experimenting calls for the juxta-
position of two. or even three. reali-
ties-what / am TO you, what l am
to myself, what. finally, am-and
his startling trick is to dramatize
this unknown ego. this unknown par
excellence, which is constantly pop
ping up in life to thwart and mega.
tive the two personalities that are
known" How rich in undertones
this formula can be Pirandello is
showing as his plays increase in
number; there are in it possibilities
Of mystery, of satire. of humor. OF
PHILOSOPHICAL least of enough phi
losophy' to satisfy the playgoer. Tn
Right You Are" he puts before his
audience two worlds, one of which
must be real and one of which must
be fictitious; and he challenges you
to tell which is real and which is fic-
titious. Which. again. is real. the
Henry ~. who is a lunatic or the
man who is not Henry Nv. at all?
Now, the mannerism of this man-
ner. intrinsically so suggestive and
SO curious-not to say profound-is
to play with the truism that the
limits between reality and unreality
or between sanity and insanity are
elusive and undefinable. 1t is this
iSht diNO lOt
his new play. Il Pazzi" ("Lunatics"),
to the terror of the writers and
critics of the .old" theater, who here
see their general deserting to the
enemy.
Though. perhaps. it Is a question
merely of a false alarm. to US Luna
tics" presents problem that has
nothing fundamentally to do with
realty or lnreality, with sanity or
insanity. Here is physician. who
just happens To be neurologist liv-
ing in his sanitarium, cannot agree
with his wife because she is secretly
in love with the memory of a dead
man who committed suicide for her
sake. They separate. But tire physi-
clan gets into a similar fix. He re-
deems lost woman. creates a con-
scious soul in a being dead to all
normal humanity and then. like Pgy-
malion, falls in love with his own
creation. But child comes TO him
and his wife. They reunite. i'm the
name of that child and at the in
stance of the woman whom the ply
sician has redeemed. The device of
having the lunatic treat and cure the
alienist shows how a mind like Brac-
that of Pirandello. but at best it is
an afterthought, suggested by the
present vogue of the new style and
:oisted upon a play already complete
in itself. The latter in fact, reduces
to very trite affirmation of an old
ideal: that when two married people
fail in love with two other people
they sacrifice themselves for the
sake of their children.
But the old never seems quite so
old as when it dresses up in the
frills and frivolities of the new.
Bracco's failure to come back with
II Pazzi" emphasizes the gap be-
tween the new movement and the
old tradition of the Italian drama.
Whether Pirandelio's theater sue
ceeds in founding a school or stops
after a temporary success as a mo-
ment's fad. it is an interesting evil
dence of the effort Europe is making
10 grasp the fugitive traits OF this
much embroiled postwar decade.
And i'm this new state of mind in