Evening star., 1939-01-01
WoIfert
Continued From Page E-1)

is to make dialogue sound both in
evitable and surprising. The dis
tressing thought about Mr.. Young
thus far is he has given no hint
that, once having learned how to
talk from behind footlights. he will
have anything to say. However, that
is not final judgment. Some writers
start out by putting the horse be-
fore the cart. Others start out being
contrary. Nobody cares, once they
get going.
Bright Rebel is a play in the
1888 mode. It's biography with an AK
to grind George Gordon Lord Byron
is known to the current world chiefly
as beautiful he-genius who wrote
great poetry, was a tailor's shill for
a certain type of collar. made of
his private sorrows and despairs
an international Pageant of the
Bleeding Heart" had great guam
tity of love affairs, one wife, one
legitimate child, at least one lille
gitimate child, and either was or
was not involved in a scandal with
his half-sister Augusta. The ques-
ton remains open and forever irreso-
lutte, the one indeterminate scandal
in brief lifetime spent prancing
from scandal to scandal.
Scandal made Byron's life In
England intolerable, and he went
into exile, trailing women rs a wind
trails clouds. He died at the age
of 36 in Missolonghi, while waiting
for his side in one Of those prodigi-
ously intricate Greek rebellions to
get started, and he died mumbling
deliriously in italian and English:
Forward! forward! courage! Follow
my example. Don't be afraid" His
heart was buried in Greece, and
what was left after that in England
but not in Westminster Abbey, be-
cause of his scandalous life.
Mr.. Young concentrates on single
facet of the man-his politics, which
were revolutionary for the time
and presents as fact-no doubt with
substantial reason, since he is a
scholar as we'll as an author-that
the scandal involving Byron's half
sister was invented deliberately by
his tory enemies in order to dis
credit him. Much else goes into
the playa credible analysis of
Byron being kicked into his love
affairs by his club-foot. by the neu-
roses that developed from his ex-
treme sensitivity to it, a portrait of
his wife as prim and harshly good,
the straight and narrow path itself.
a picture Of his sister as the only
one who loved him selflessly-but
politics form the framework and
Byron is spread-eagled across 1t.
The play concludes with the death
scene in Missolonghi, the longest,
most tedious and perhaps the worst
amount of dying an innocent by
stander has had to watch since the
theater decided to stop beating tears
out of its audiences with a club.
John Cromwell, son Of a former
president of the New York Stock
Exchange and Harvard boy, is
beautiful enough for the part Of
Byron, but acts as If he we're try
ing to pull down the house with
his own two hands. Ann Loring,
of the movies, does awfully well by
Augusta, and Beatrice Terry Is a
chronic delight in the part of Lady
Melbourne, Byron's aunt-in-law.
There is an extremely capable
revival of Outward Bound" at
tracing large numbers of clients
to George Brady's playhouse. Even
If you share my dislike for Sutton
Vanes famous play about an as
sortment of characters who dis
cover that the ferryboat across the
River Styx looks like q trans-At-
lantic liner, drinking salon and
all, and that immortality consists Of