The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-03-05
~ DRAMA ~
The Voodoo Orgy of Election
Loud Speaker" Is Biting Satire on American
Political Fakery-and Then Some
Reviewed BY HARBoR ALLEN.


Ochief trouble with the New York
stage is the lack Of intelligent
critics. If you read the reviews in
the newspapers on John Howard
Lawson's loud Speaker" (playing
at the New Playwrights Theatre,
West Sind St. you will agree with
him. One of them finds the play
vague" Another refers to the con-
structivist setting as "just a dis
tracing thicket of bright green
stairways running in every direc-
ton" A third grows excited over
the entry of actors on chutes; people
don't do that in real life! Still an
other finds Lawson "overshrieking
his mark"
There is nothing vague" about
cloud Speaker" The "distracting
thicket of bright green stairways" is
Ineligible enough if you have lit
tie imagination. The materials from
which the play is drawn are so COM
monplace and so American that al
most everybody but a professional
newspaper critic can understand and
enjoy them. If comedy means to you
the pert handling of tea-cup by
gentleman in frock coat, Loud
Speaker" will be "overshrieking its
mark" But if you are revolution
list, if you like good coarse burlesque,
slashing satire and snappy action,
you will be neither puzzled nor bored
by this play.
Loud Speaker" is a satirical epic
on American fakery. Every Ameri-
can fake is here. Fake religion, fake
romance, fake politics, fake news,
fake women, the fake younger gen.
eration," fake booze, fake newspaper
confessions, fake radio speeches. The
bathing beauty sweetheart, the sob
sister, the tabloid reporter, the poll
teal campaign manager, the black
bottom dancer, the amorous couple
warbling buttery songs in the spot
light; all, all are here, the old famil-
lar faces. Like Paragon, author of
"Pinwheel," Lawson has drawn his
material from the tabloids. High
brows sniff. They find him vulgar,
commonplace, not quite refined. Once
too they shifted at jazz and at the
movies. But that was before Gil
bert Seldes wrote his "Seven Lively
Arts" Nobody from the Dial has
yet come along to proclaim the tab
loid the eighth lively art.
Loud Speaker tells of the rise to
fame of Henry U. Collins, "a good
man." Having sailed away his mil
lions, Henry has political aspirations
on a return to decency" platform.
While his wife dabbles in religious
hokum, his manager i les advice on
bootleggers, his daughter expert
ments in Flaming YOUTH" his house
is overrun with reporters, and his
1902 bathing beauty dream girl
energies from an Atlantic City past.
Henry becomes New York's tabloid
governor" He does it with bunk.
Nobody before has done the voodoo
orgy of an American election the JUS
tice it is done in this farce. Elections
must have been crying out for just
such a farce. You wonder how it
could have been passed up.
All this is mounted on the first
Russian constructivist setting used
in America. The Actors Theatre
pecked at constructivism in God
Loves U.s." The Neighborhood Play
house gave it a careful bath Zone
has to delouse these immigrants, you
know in "Pinwheel." The Play
wrights give it full play. To me it
was revelation. The stage sudden
ly acquired new dimensions, new spa
:. ciousness. 1t became a sort of cir
Gus. Scenes dovetail, actors flow
from one episode into another. You
see them enter windows, go upstairs,
pause on landings, shout down, form
strangely new and exciting pictures.
With constructivism a new rush of
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