Evening star., 1937-11-29

member of that select and tragic
group which Odets has fed into the
machine age in the faint, but never
wan, hope that good shall come Of
the lesson so emphatically related.
Mr. Odets has surrounded his
Golden Boy" played by Louis Adler,
group theater standby with as fine
an array of hard people as you are
likely to find in any play this season.
The group through which the SEN
sitive lad moves is composed Of
racketeers, killers, prize fight hangers
on and their molls, completely savage
bunch of exploiters who represent to
the ultimate degree the mercilessness
of the system which makes Odets
always So furious.
Every one of them is a kind of
masterpiece of character creation and
Interpretation. Mr. Odets looks upon
circumstance as mechanism for the
making of vicious men and women
and those upon whom he has ventured
to report here are typically repulsive
aSsemblage. His gangsters are more
ratlike, his prize ight managers more
ruthless and his molls more unfeeling
than any save those bearing the Odets
trademark.
Odets' Words Turn.
Against them he has set the con-
trasting virtues of the boy with the
violinist's soul and the lads fine, if
simple, father. The interplay between
them with victory inexorably on the
side of the evil forces is material of
high dramatic value.
Odets definitely is not a playwright
to pull his fighters punches. He
makes that very clear when he lets
young Joe 60 to the limit of destruc-
tiveness in final fight in which the
hands that wanted only to make lovely
music kill a ring opponent and are
broken beyond hope of ever playing
the violin. Grim, what?
For all the potency of his work, the
young man who couple of seasons ago
was regarded as one of the white hopes
of the theater still is not in complete
control of the talent which is his
blessing. There are few tricks he
cannot do with words, but the words
he uses also can do tricks with Odets.
1t is bit startling, even though you
have learned to expect it, to have one
OF his rugged gutter men start speak
ing the kind of winged words which
might more validly carry the by-line
OF Edna st. Vincent Millay. It is
piquant, but it is not the perfection
which one always hopes from an
Odets.
Golden Boy" derives no little of
its strength from the quality of its
Interpretation. The group theater,
which specializes in such things, has
cast it excellently from Luther Adler,
as the prize fighter, down to the call
boy in that fight arena Miss Farmer
as tough young lady who knew which
side her bread was buttered on-though
she was sorry it had to be that side
Is Tearing how to be an actress with
out making you uncomfortably aware
of that fact. Roman Bohnen de-
lineates Odets' prize fight manager
with proper emphasis upon the craven
side of the character, and Morris
Carnovsky is extremely impressive in
his portrayal of the father who could
never understand his sons apostacy
to beauty and the violin. Harry Brats-
burg, who played potent Duke
Manteo in the Washington Civic
Theater's 'Petrified Forest" carries on
very nicely in big part in Golden
Boy"
1t takes 3 acts and IL scenes to
tell Odets' angry story, but it moves
at pace that never leaves you con-
scious of its length.