Evening star., 1941-09-14
The Wookey' Also Splits
The Critics on Broadway
WOlfert Votes
A Sturdy NO
On Drama
By Ira Wolferf.
NEW YORK.

NEW YORK.
The plot of THE Wookey," a new
play by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan,
was obtained by the management
through the courtesy of the British
people. Incidental noises are by
German bombers and bombs and
R. A. F. fighter planes. So the
play could not fail to be interesting
at times and moving at other times,
but it is really not a good play at
all, at all.
When the actors fall silent and
the guns, bombs and planes-all
the real stuff imported from London
on sound f1lm-take over, then The
Wookey' becomes drama with tre-
mendouS excitement In it. But the
actors are not silent often. When
they speak one hears the author
clacking away mechanically. When
they move about one sees the man.
agement "a movie management
carefully strangling all reality with
a celluloid garrote. The combina-
ton of the two-a slick paper maga-
zine writer wise to all the gadgets
and movie management-has
come close to reducing the story
of the British people in the summer
of 1910 to something vulgar.
The fact that the author and
the management have not sue
ceeded entirely in making their
story vulgar is due TO no lack OF
effort or attention to detail on
their part, but to the British people
themselves and the way their story
has been told in American news
papers.
Every one going to see The
WOokey" goes with the memory OF
the newspaper stories alive in his
mind. 1t helps him to realize that
people lived this story and endured
and did these things and 1t makes
him forget at tlmes-not always,
but for good stretches-that. in the
Plymouth Theater, only actors are
enduring and doing.
The central character Of the play
is a trying invention named Horace
Wookey. He is played by Edmund
GWenn. but Mr.. Gwenn. good
actor when he has words to say
and business to attend 10. is not
to blame. For this contrivance
named Horace Wookey has stepped
right out of nickel fiction into a
Cockney family's dockside home in
London on the Friday of September
|. 1899. when Hitler marched into
Poland.
Mr.. Wookey and his play continue
present until toward the end OF Sep
tember. 1910, when. as We now know,
the battle of Britain was won
chiefly by the endurance under hor-
rifying punishment of the British
people. Mr.. Wookey takes all the
punishment of the British people.
His brother-in-law is killed fight
ing a rear-guard action before Dun
kerque. He himself makes II round
trips to DunkerQue under fire. His
home is bombed to rubble, his wife
killed. his son pinned under crashed
in stairs, his daughter bombed into
a nervous collapse at munitions
plant and, at the end, while a Ger
man announcer is boast'ng over the
radio, Mr. Wookey, a stolen ma
chine gun in his hand, walks slowly
and silently up the stairs out of a
bomb shelter to defend the docks
from which all anti-aircraft guns
have been removed.
Through all this utterly notable
story MI Wookey remains a piece
of nickel fiction. It sounds in
credible, but the author and his
management have accomplished the
trick They lace the story with a
counterpoint of all the gadgets,
widgets, conceits and lame-gaited
fancies of hackneyed fiction and
movies.
(Released by the North American
Newspaper Alliance. me-