Evening star., 1925-01-04
Zamiel and the New York
Play Producers.
By Phi1ander Johnson.

How stands the record of the
dying year?" inquired Zamiel in
that ancient fantasy of the inferno
"The Black Crook" Each passing
season brings the impression that
the theater is on its way to join
Zamiel in his abode, yet the theater
plods along, going to the dogs-yet
never quite arriving. Cerberus al
ways winks his eyes, wags his tai
and tells Thespis to travel along and
see if he cannot do better another
season.
Thanks in great degree to the
theater, the vices of previous day
appear almost like virtues as COM
pared with the new revelations
which seem terrible because unfa-
miliar. Zamiel, with all his Satanic
potency, would never have dared as
sumo the liberties of the current
stage. He would not have ventured
to name his own residence in plain
English. The assumption that a
criminal could have a kind heart
would have been intolerable. A
woman with a past could hope for
no future save a pathetic and pic
turesque demise in the last act.
x X x
The record shows that Zamiel has
lost his influence and may as we'll
go out of business. Realism has
gathered increasing power to over
throw idealism, and as facts displace
poetry the myths fade away. Peo-
pie no longer thing of Mephisto.
Subcavernous fancies have been re-
duced to discussions of oil and an
thracite. We find it difficult to keep
our minds on angels when we have
aeroplanes.
The American theater of today is
probably the richest theater the
world has ever known-yet 1925
PHILOSOPHERS and new standards of
art and new moral ideals to build
upon. 1t is Photographic in the
finest mechanical sense. 1t is inter-
pretive but feebly. 1t fourishes its
toes, and walls incoherently as it
bites its silver spoon, reveling un-
abaShed in its own physical con-
sciousness untrammeled by conserv-
ative prejudice.
X x x
Or to trace different line OF
metaphor, the theater is gradually
recovering from state of anarchy,
with every conceivable influence
willing to risk fortune in the Strug-
gle for domination-the drawing
room, the schoolroom, the prize
ring, the bucket shop, the racing
stable, the music-publishing house,
the cabaret-every conceivable in
Auence is in active assertion, with a
view to autocratic authority over the
stage-excepting the theater itself.
x x X x
A deadlock might seem easily pos
sible under such a state of conten-
tion. Yet the theater bravely keeps
it's way, thanks to the player folk
themselves-thanks to that IRE
pressible desire for expression which
enables the artist to burn his chair
for lack of other fuel and to dance
in an effort TO make believe he did
not want it in the first place. There
were never more good actors before
the public than there are today
Never so many patient, courageous
and devoted people seeking to sup
ply material for the stage and never
so many plays riddled and reduced
to nonsense by incompetence OF
acting and direction.
X x
How much perfection of mechani-
cal expression can do for play was
illustrated iG "The Swan" 1t had a
story of the old Jane Eyre sort, only
with tutor aspiring to lofty matri-
monial connection instead of a gov
erness. But it affords dazzling
glimpse into high society for those
whose viewpoint is more or less
that of the witching little waif in
"A Kiss for Cinderella" What a
message of hope it carries! No mat
ter how stupid you are you may get
by if you are properly gilded. There
is no picture more comforting to the
democratic mind than that of roya
dinner party; for the democratic
mind observes its fiction with the