The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-06-01

Patience" and the Poets
Gilbert and Sullivan Again Take a Crack
at Hero Worship

pERKE Hamburg Productions, Inc,
= are reviving Gilbert and Sullivan.
They are courageous outfit, to put
Patience" on at the Theatre Masque.
That's too close to Greenwich Village.
Somewhere out in Bronx would have
been safer. For Patience" one of
the lesser known Of the Gilbertian
operas, swings a wicked lash over our
long haired friends. If you hear
your versifying neighbor running
down Patience" believe him not, his
wrath is highest praise, and proves
the whip bites deep.
The action revolves around Reginald
Bunthorne (James Watts), a fleshly
poet, an arrant knave, who knows he
is fraud, and Archibald Grosvenor
(Joseph Macaulay), the idyllic poet,
who is a Narcissan, and so unfor-
tunate as not to know it. These are
prototypes. Their. children are still
with us, damn the luck.
Both are flouted, Knocked, dissected
flayed, and stabbed in the back, to
the tune of some very pretty lyrics,
sung by remarkably pretty girls.
But the women who trail after
these poets are not spared either. No
wonder this play has been unpopular.
None who worship matinee idols could
enjoy it, and the idols too, would
have to feel that the most unldndest
cut of all was the ridicule that in
directly drops upon them because
of the quality of their conquests. The
curtain rises on an elaborate jeer at
the women who fall for poets. The
ladies enraptured by Bunthorne, stand
around the stage, dressed in semi
Greek costumes, in poses more goofy
than Greek, and sing-"Twenty love-
sick maidens we-maidens much
against our will" Who can take
credit for winning what is evidently
easy to win?
AS foils to the poets appear the
Heavy Dragons, glaring with "prime
colors." How come they march on
the stage doing goose step as
stiffly as the House Guards of the
Hohenzollerns Is this as it was in
the beginning, or has some Trishman
bored from within the Perke HAM
berg corporation?
But if the Heavy Dragons balance
their light Drained rivals, they are
not allowed to get away unscathed.
Within a few minutes the fact is
brought out that these man-hunters
are passionately fond of candy. and
that they regard their red coats as
primarily lures for ladies'. In their
midst, too, silliest of them all. is a
certain Lieutenant, the Duke of
Dunstable. Even the stupid dragons
find him stupider than any HE
proves it later by his choice of a
wife,, and yet his very presence in
the regiment is a reproof to the
Englishman's love for lords-the poor
freak had to enlist to escape the con-
slant monotony of cloying flattery and
adulation.
In the end the whole mob of them
nearly succeed in making an aesthetic
of the only proletarian in the play.
Patience, the milkmaid. She winds
up by marrying the idyllic poet. tho
not until he reforms, and agrees not
to write any more of his junk.
don't know whether the Gilbert
and Sullivan partners were really
conscious revolutionists - probably
not. Probably their poetry and music
We're based merely on the rule of
thumb theory, Where you see a
head, hit it." But it is gratifying to
see that so many of the heads which
fall beneath their baton strokes are
those which have worn the crowns of
popular adulation during one of the
most hypocritical periods in English
history.
The singing is particularly clear
and sweet. Vivian Harte, as Patience
and Bernice Mershon as The Lady
Jane were especially good.--vern
Smith.