Evening star., 1940-04-21
Staying Alive
A Fighting
Business
That's the Message
Morning Star
Gives New York
r., Irn Wo1forf
By Ira Wolfeyt.
NEW YORK

-
NEW YORK.
Well, here is Becky Felderman.
whose husband was quite fine fell
low, but was dead by 1910 and left
her with three daughters and a son
to bring UP in tenement house on 4
the lower east side in New York.
The girls and boy are the best
kind of immigrants, the kind that
built UP this country, aswarm with
push and 60. hot for democracy and
kindly, decent living. Only one of
them confuses that with making
money and she comes to bad end.
Becky took in a boarder to help
along and he was fine fellow, too,
and wanted to marry her. She
liked him all right, but she was all
wrapped up in her children and in
her late husbands memory, and she
was that funny kind of woman who
believes in playing fair with the man
she marries. She felt If she mar
ried Aaron Greenspan she would
always be cheating on him by stack
ing him up against the late Mr..
Felderman. So it was no go between
Aaron and Becky, although he al
ways kept trying.
The family kept Becky active any
way. One of the girls died in the
Triangle sweatshop fire-the fire
which killed 145 girls, whose tragic
end strangled sweatshops in New
York and resulted in the formation
of the Garment Workers Union
and the boy was killed in France
in 1918. Another daughter married
a song writer with a taste for other
women and had her troubles, which
she kept bringing back to mama.
The third daughter, the money!
lover, turned cruel in her chase for
the dollar and got dollars and noth-
ing else, so where was she when the
depression came and the dollars
went away?
All This Is Morning Star"
That's what Sylvia Regan's play,
Morning Star" is about. We take
up with the family in 1910 in the
middle of all their troubles and
leave them in 1881 in the middle
of all their new troubles and the
only impression that emerges from
the steady array of incident is that
staying alive is fighting business
and involves crying and laughing
and renewal. A lot of people derive
less of an impression from 10 years
Of life.
The whole thing is written on
the level of "Abie's Irish Rose" 1t
is warm and elemental stuff, with
characters seen as We, presuming
we~are not artists, see the people
around us. The comedy depends
almost entirely on Renaissance The
/ audience is expected to laugh at
seeing actors do the little homely
things it itself does when no one
is looking. don't know why authors
expect us to laugh at that kind Of
stuff, but they do, and the funny
thing is we do, too. We laugh,
too.
The acting is something else again.
Molly Picon, a darling of Yiddish
vaudeville and musical comedy,
makes her debut in a straight part
on the English stage in the role of
Becky and discloses that she Is an
extraordinary artist. Joseph Buloff,
another of the Yiddish players, does
Aaron Greenspan and these two
demonstrate what those of us who
travel to the East Side now and
then have known all along-that
the modern Jewish actors are among
the really great actors of the Amer
ican theater. They use their faces
and their bodies in a manner that
makes the uptown theater look ane-
mic. When my heart needs break
ing or want to be thrown laugh
ing into the aisle, then let Molly
Picon and Joseph Buloh do it.
Written With Fists.
The first commercial use OF the
living newspaper technique devel-
oped by the w. P. AS late Federal
theater project is violent, extraor-
dinarily powerful and dramatic as
sault on the controlling members of
the American Medical Association.
Medicine Show is what it is called,
and Oscar Saul and H. r. Hays have
written it with their fists.
The living newspaper technique
was designed for the presentation on
a stage of information and a point
of view.
The major statistic in Medicine
Show" is that every year 25O,0O0
people die needlessly of sickness in
the United States. The play starts
at o'clock with an actor coming to
the front of the stage and telling the
audience that between now and II
o'clock SO people who need not die
at all will die for reasons which can
be avoided.
From then on the play details q
major paradox: The fact that thou
sands of people are dying for lack
of medical care and the thousands
of doctors are starving for lack of
patients.
The play is no fun at all. 1t is
handled with earnest excitement
and it aims to teach and arouse
rather than entertain. What it aims
at, it hits right square in the heart.
tReleased by the North American
| Newspaper Alliance. 1nc.)