Evening star., 1944-10-17

meloQfAmaS, but It's victory Will pro
season. Certainly 1t is also one of
Tangled Web" is title which M
ehastely moral copplets of Sir Wal
] ter Scott, who seems not only to
4 have given the play its name, but
I also its flavor. 1t deals with the
strange, but never lively, phenom-
enon Of violent death in the home
Of a gentle, elderly professor of
English literature at Harvard. Per
Sc, that is not necessarily dull
subject-violent death, not English
Hterature-but as brought off in
Tangled Web" it is a collection of
cliches probably equaled only by
those in the prof's lectures on the
Victorian poets.
Before the tumult and shouting
have died, interest in the play has.
Almost before the first act is over,
1t cannot make any difference who
killed the professors pretty young
wife. She is dead and the audience
is in a state of coma. One woman,
who was later identified as former
melodrama actress, reused herself
long enough to laugh loudly at the
line, "He is ambitious, otherwise he
would not have gone to Harvard"
but for the most part, somnolence
prevailed.
X X X
Mr.. Pollock, formerly fertile and
vehement contributor to the thea
ter, has written his first play in l3
years in Tangled Web" 1t repre-
sents an adaptation of a mystery
story, 'The Professors Alibi," which
was published in a popular fiction
magazine in 1896. 1t might we'll
have been left right there, decently
inferred in the publishers files and
in the longer memories of some of
its subscribers.
Chief among those who discover
"Oh, what tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive"
Is the professor, who has a couplet
at his tongues tip to cover every
situation with which life confronts
him. He probably kills all interest
in himself as human being-at
least in AID. 1944-when he quotes
the Scott couplet while crushing
his dead wife's body to his bosom in
the first act. He gets merely Won
dering laughter thereafter when he
pops up with Oliver st. John Co.
garty, Alexander Pope, Hobbies and
the Book of Revelations among
other authorities whose words come
to mind when he is cropping through
his personal disaster to the light
again.
Mr.. Pollock has peopled his tract
with virtually every stock character
IN the library of melodrama, all of
them looking precisely like them
selves in dozens of similar plays.
The young wife, good girl essen
tally but trapped hopelessly by
psychologist fetish for men whose
boards still look blue after shaving.
gets out of the way very quickly.
Not 50 do the detective captain who
was ambitious enough to go to Har-
ward, the professors sister-in-law
who wants to marry the scion of one
OF Boston's Oldest and proudest fami-
lies, the poor scion, the elderly maid
who loses her boomers in the mas
ter bedroom, the crisp looking dis
trlct attorney, the taxi driver, the
elderly clerk of the D. A. and the
latter's giddy stenographer. What
ever the play needs of tenseness or
comedy relief, one of them is always
there to provide it, and at lust the
second you have been taught to ex-
pect them in other old fashioned
melodramas. The william, fellow
with twitch and smile, is quite
as standard as any of the others.
Xxx X
Tangled Web" was directed by
Its author and he has allowed none
OF those suave subtleties of the
more recent school of melodrama
to intrude upon his stage. His pro-
lessor, played by Clay Clement, is
none OF your gentle PROFESSIONAL
souls to cloak his tragedy with dig
nifty. He is upset about his wife's
death and he shows it lavishly, and
he is just as strident in registering
his disagreement with the police
and the D, A. over the case they
have built up. Actually, the only
urbane characters permitted on the
premises of Tangled Web" are the
Harvard-educated detective and the
district attorney, and even they
never remain pianissimo when
there's real point to be made.
Mr.. Clements role. you must
have gathered, is considerably less
than the seasons most grateful.
That must go, too, for Norman
MacKay as the policeman; Dorothy
Emery and Doris Day as the
harassed sisters in the professors