Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-12-14

RACK In 1907 there appeared in the
English industrial center Of Bir-
mingham a not very successful insur-
ance agent, who happened to be stage
struck. His name was John Drink
water, and he was already known as
the author of many poems Of quality,
which perhaps explained his failure as
an insurance go-getter.
The young mans interest in the thea
ter could be traced directly to the fact
that his father, A. e. Drinkwater, was
we'll known impressario, manager for
Lillah Mccarthy and Of the Kingway
Theater in London. The elder Drink
water, anxious to divorce his son from
any association with the theater, had
sent him away from Leytonstone, his
home city, to school at oxford. How
ever, six years of class room confine-
ment failed to cure the stage-struck
youth. All his energies were directed
toward writing and toward footlights.
This accounts for Johns enthusiasm
when he met Barry v. Jackson, a
wealthy industralist of Birmingham,
whose hobby was the theater. With Sir
Barry The was later knignted) and four
ether friendS, Drinkwater founded the
Pilgrim Players, a group pledged to
crusade for the theater in q manner
calculated to be superior to that Of the
regular commercial theater, at least as
exemplifed in the Birmingham of that
day.
BY 1913 the little band Of half a
dozen visionary friends had developed
into an exclusively professional group
Of actors and playwrights. Sir Barry
had been persuaded to build and equip
his intimate theater (Which incidentally
Is one of the most beautiful architec-
turally in England), and John Drink
water had given up his hated insurance
business to become the director of the
newly christened Birmingham Roper
tory Theater. This institution. with Sir
Barry as its financial angel, and Drink
water It's guiding artistic sponsor, was
destined to become famous as the home
of the greatest plays by the finest mod
ern dramatists, British and Continent
tai.
During the first dozen years of its
existence IS plays By Shakespeare, as
well as revivals OF other English clas-
slcS, by Goldsmith, Congreve and Sheri-
Dan, were presented there. Six plays
by 1bsen and IL by Shaw, including
the full cycle Of BLACK to Methuselah,
were seen at this playhouse before any
London manager would acknowledge
their greatness.
The Immortal Hour" and Abraham
Lincoln were rejected by countless
managers, until Sir Barry produced
them at Birmingham. Plays by the
younger English and Irish dramatists,
such as Synge, O'Casey, Yeats, Mase-
neid, Abercrombie and Bottomley, st.
John Hankin, Wilde. Galsworthy and
Drinkwater. had their premieres at this
theater. The Continental dramatists
SHOWN to audiences at Birmingham,
VINO otherwise might not ever have
been examples Of their work, include
Gaideron, Griboyedov, Dumas, lola,
BJornsen and Strindberg.
Although Drinkwater's official con-
tact with the Birmingham Repertory
Iheater was discontinued in 1924, he
sun retains his old interest in it. When
ne completed Bird in Hand"-his first
comedy-in 1927, he gave Sir Barry the
ilrst reading Of 1t, which resulted in its
production there few months later
written in a completely new vein
Bird IN Hand" instantly placed DRINK
wafer high in the list OF modern com
edy writer's. London saw Bird in