The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-10-29
A POWERFUL PLAY
Goods of the Lightning" Is Powerful Drama
Based on Sacco-Vanzetti Murder

AN intense drama about working
"A class life is now being presented
at the Little Theatre. 1t is a power
full play wrought from the flaming
and bitter facts of the seven years
torture and ultimate murder OF
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van
zetti.
Goods of the Lightning" by Max
well Anderson and Harold Kicker
son is one of the most eloquent,
moving and effective plays produced
in this country in many years.
The authors present clearly a
striking picture Of the system which
murdered Sacco and Vanzetti. There
are passages in the play which
ring with bitterness and hatred
against the money-men whose lust
for the blood of the two Italian i'm
migrants was satisfied only when
their lifeless bodies were lifted from
the electric chair. The authors have
taken the salient facts of the actual
record, the background of hatred and
prejudice, but they have disguised,
in sense, some of the major char
acters.
The first act opens on a grimy,
barren hash-house in little indus
trial town during the height of
dock and mill strike being led by
Macready Charles Bickford) and
Capraro Horace Braham).
Macready is a vigorous, fiery la
boz. agitator with an implacable
hatred for the boss class and their
docile henchmen and retainers in the
court, the church, and the press.
Capraro, on the contrary, is a gen.
tie, passive, and wistful young
Italian anarchist, hurt and rather
dazed by the relentless brutality of
the forces of capitalist law and gov
eminent.
On the final day of the strike,
murder and robbery is committed
An agent provocateur, a Department
of Justice stoolpigeon, aids in the
arrest of Macready and Capraro.
The remaining scenes carry thru
with a terrifying swiftness and
tragic inevitability the frame-up
and execution of the two workers.
The authors conception of Mac
ready is vivid and real. He is not
the "agitator" of the conventional
stage-a visionary and fool, but
strong, courageous, a fighter with
clear-cut conceptions of the class
nature of capitalist society. In the
same way the authors escape the
pitfalls of melodrama by making the
district attorney not a bloodthirsty
villain but an intelligent, cynical
harlot, serving the master class.
Three scenes in the play are al
most unforgettable. One is in the
office of the district attorney while
he is fixing" the witnesses for the
state. The other memorable scenes
are during the trial and final SEN
tence. Here the two defendants
even as Sacco and Vanzetti on that
sunny morning in April in Dedham,
in their defiant words,
their complete contempt for the
flimsy pretenses of law and order.
In the scene in the district attor-
ney's office, the cynical corruption
and brutality of the capitalist legal
system is presented in it's most glar-
ing light. Ambitious, ruthless, clever,
the district attorney is shown fas-
tening the iron links of the frame
up chain. While admitting to his
close friend, the owner of the mill
in which Capraro and Macready led I
the strike, that the two men are in
nocent and that his case is thin, he
nevertheless proceeds theoretically
70 get conviction-and with sue
,ess.
A former custodian of house of
prostitution, terrorized with black
nail by the willy district attorney,
and half-wit youth-these are the