The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-18
The World of
the Theatre
By HAROLD EDGAR
NOTHING AND LESS

lone Sunday Afternoon" and the
musical show Hold Your Horses"
is about 1900; the period of Glare
"AmoWette" at the Henry |
Miller Theatre is 1910; and THE |
Pursuit of Happiness" at the Avon |
take us back to 1777. Mae
Vests movie "She Done Him
Wrong" turned to the Nineties, the |
operetta Music in the Air" harked |
back to Tyrolese past, and an
are made of an adapta-
ton of Moliere'S School for Hus-
bands" and Johann Strauss Fielder
maus. Anywhere out of this
world" cried the French poet Bau-
delaire, and here we have the the
atre train to forgetfulness, the $3.50
road to nowhere.
No matter how strenuously an ar
fist resistS his times, no matter how |
fervently he wraps himself in mists |
of the past, he always remains
strictly contemporary. His quest OF
bygone day must be interpreted as
either an effort to understand his |
own time-in which case his use of
history is valid-or as an attempt to |
run away from tin which case he |
is merely drowning his sorrows. In |
the instance of our present plays, |
however, we have nothing as serious
as either of these processes. 1t is
largely a case of exhaustion. The
Observation-Disclosures and pro- |
ducers-have taken up almost every |
conceivable subject, and the number |
of possible novelties seems to be
dwindling. Of course this does not |
mean that any of the subjects that
have been used have actually been
given artistic treatment, but there
have been plays about journalism,
prize-fights, night-clubs, radio, rack
cts, politics, movies, doctors, lawyers,
Indians, thieves, marriage, divorce,
homoSexuality and what not. Broad
way shuns labor plays, and the more
direct aspects of the class struggle
are taboo. There seems so little left |
to be cynical about; there is GER
tainly nothing to be enthusiastic |
about, and to be profound or thor
ough about anything takes time and
hard work, which is very doubtful |
business. So the newest novelty is
the past. The past, moreover, is
safe; whether one is cynical or senti-
mental about it comes to the same
thing-it need not affect what one is
doing or thinking today. It is a kind
of colorful void.
So our costume plays are really
1888 after all, a delicate symptom of
capitalisns arrested development. /
Only THE Pursuit of Happiness" the
newest pleasantly to please the boys
uptown, derives its inspiration a little
from the heyday of Greenwich VIII
lage. Time was, when the refugees
from middle-western drabness, New
England Methodism and Ethical Cul-
ture or Riverside Drive Judaism,
below Fourteenth st. and
wrote skitS, playlets and even dramas
to rout American puritanism. Some
of them composed semi Freudian
tragedies of sex repression, but most |
of them dabbled in antique motifs:
pseudo-Greek, pseudo Renaissance,
pseudo Romantic and generally |
pseudo. The point of these plays
was that their authors were "free,"
that the audiences that applauded
them were free" and amt we got
fun! Some of these pranks were not
without talent, they brought new
tone into the American theatre, and
the shrewder and more energetic Of
these talents moved uptown and
formidable institutions.
Their chief artistic characteristic
was their eclecticism. These plays
had cute minimum of everything:
a touch of history, a bit of Shaw, a
Whiff of continentalism, dose Of
1t was all very sweet
really and quite harmless as the sub
sequent development of this tendency
proved. What didn't become the
Guild became the Little
At heart, it was spoiled
child, given to unorganized reading
and an independent income. The
child goes to many literary parties
and travels abroad But despite the
advance of years it fits in perfectly
with the Broadway Theatre of 1888.
Even in the diluted form of 1.-THE
Pursuit of Happiness" it has its
tickled audiences. They do not no.
tice that the laugh lines are bor-
rowed from everywhere including old
A. H. Woods bedroom farces, they do
do not mind that the production is
acted like a prep-school show, they
do not think that the old bugaboo
Of Puritanism in its Greenwich Vii
Iage form has long been forgotten.
What they like is the novel-that is
The 1777-setting, the suggestion Of
sex SO quaint and innocent that it
might be the Three Little Pigs, the
feeling that though it is quite up-to-
late it is all as trifling as any mu-
steal comedy plot. They like it be-
cause one can hardly remember what
t is all about even while it is hap
oening, because it does not inter-
fere with the light-headed cheeri-
ness OF these N. R. A. days. They
ike 1t because 1t is nothing
If this is nothing, Her Man OF
Wax" at the Shubert Theatre is less.
It would hardly be worth mention
ng at all were it not for the fact that
t illustrates what the Broadway
,heatre can accomplish In reducing
,alent to shame. The comedy Wal
ier Hasenclever wrote. Napoleon
Ileifft Elm" Napoleon Takes Hold,
vas a better than average example