1933-11-15 — Page 7

Page

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 1933.

ART AND DRAMA

WORKING MAN'S

PLAY

Another "Bronte"

Success.

ADMIRABLY DRAWN PORTRAITS |

Mr. John Davidson, the working man playwright, author of "The Brontes of Haworth l'arsenage". had the bad luck to be forestalled by the production of { Rronte plays in London, though his own was actually written and accepted before the others.

more

Its presentation at the Birming ham Repertory Theatre showed fairly certainly that if would have found its way to the Woxt-end in propitious eircumstancer, Written in a simple chronicle form.) the piece shows an astonishing! fidelity to the facts, as know them, of the strange family, and the charneters are drawn

humanly.

And

Admirable Dialogue Inevitably Branwell. the dissolute brother, by reason of the pic- turesque quality, tends to monid the play on himself. After his lurid death. Emily's passing and Char lotte's courtship tend to anticlimax. But the play is saved by Mr Davi son's admirable dialogue and sharp, definite line of characterisation

The chief neling honours must go to Miae Marie Ault for her beati ful performance as "Tabby." the ancient servitor of Haworth. Au-

thor and player here collaborate in perfect sympathy, and the result in. a portrait of convincing depth and richness.

Enigmatic "Mona Beery"

Sometimes called the “gooßest art society in the world," the Scarab Club recently held fte annual “fake” art exhibit at Detroit. Here is one of the prominent exhibita and its creator, Floyd Nixon. The painting is a burlesque on Da Vinci's masterpiece, and is called the "Mona Beery," the classic features of the screen star being used instead of the randonna.

Conventions

The Stage

Of

A Legacy From The Past

THE CHINA MAIL.

DYING CLASS OF PLAYWRIGHTS

Sir Arthur Pinero Now Sole Survivor.

The death of Alfred Sutro leaves Sir Arthur Pinero the last survivor. of the playwrights for whom balance and construction were of first importance.

Changing tastes left Sutro a little; bewildered, and his efforts to keep pace with it were hardly satisfac- tory.

Personally he remained urbane and genial, with all the dignity of] the finest type of Jew.

His last three plays, "A Man with, ļa Heart," "The Desperate Lovers,” and "Living Together," were only moderately successful, and Sutro felt this rather keenly.

*The Walls of Jericho" wan · trile melodramatic but it was a fino piece of work and Sutro's best play. The remark of the wife, finely 4played by Miss Violet Vanbrugh, to her philanthorpic husband—“Oh, Jack, you've got the whole of the East End of London to practise on. can't you leave your own family alone?"-was interpreted, for some reason, as a sneer at East End Jewn, who lodge a protest. Sutro annoyed and much distressed.

RUBENS PICTURE

STOLEN.

WAS

Highly Unconventional Masterpiece.

"MADONNA AND CHILD."

London,

ENGLISHMAN'S PLAY REPRESENTING FOREIGN CHARACTERS The recent theft of a "Madonas

ON POLISH PATRIOT

"Jadwiga" Produced

In Warsaw.

FIRST PLAY ON POLAND'S FAMOUS QUEEN

She reign

as the Saint Joan of Poland

jother.

he

IN ENGLISH PLAYS

(By Sydney W. Carroll)

London. that brilliant

"THE ACE."

and Child," painted by Rubens, from a house at Cheam has an in- terest apart from the value and artistic worth of the picture, which

is highly unconventional and prob-

None of the important pieture thefts in the past half-century has included a Rubens. Gainsborough whose "Duchess of Devonshire"

WAR

WAL

artur, Mr. Esmeably of an early period. For pío- What would the theatre do with Perey. He is player who knows lures by Rubens have been singu- out its conventions? The kame Germany thoroughly and has had larly fortunate in escaping such of "Let's Pretend" is carried on jopportunities of studying the Ger- depredations. upon the stage with never-ending man at first-hand. Warsaw is to see the first produc- hopefulness. If we are not ready tion of an English play. entitled to be deceived, if we cannot accept Ja "The Ace" Mr. Percy has the "Jadwiga," based on the lie at one the impossible or the unreasonable lover-written and rather incredible of the greatest women in European for the unlikely, it we are not abla part of a German magazine scribe was stolen from Bond-street in history, Queen Jadwigs

to accommodate urselves to the who is in search of material

for 1874 and restored 25 years later; ed from 1884 16 1399, surd is known rules of the pretenders, the theatre her worship and military propa-Vandyck, whose "Concert dea

is no place for us. Verisimilitude ganda. Without the nid of any Anges," valued at £30,000, and terarity are twin stage sisters spoken The author. Mr. W. G. Hole, went,

German. and speaking stolen three years ago; Romney, to Poland with a party that included constantly being mistaken for each throughout entirely in English Mr. whose

"Mrs. Davenport” John Galsworthy, and his interesti

Percy must convey to us the man- stolen; and Reynolds, whose £50,- In Jadwiga was aroused when

As a rule stage conventions come iners, the idiosyncracies of a dis-000 "Portrait of a Lady" disappear. saw her tomb in the Cathedral at

down to us from the past ages.inctly Teutonie type. He does no.ed from the Wertheimer collection Cracow.

How they came it is not alwars think, to perfection. First Play About Jadwiga Jenny to Buy. Who first invented the

in 1907, have all tempted thieves But this kind of national inter time and time again. Perhaps the most remarkable phloquy and the aride?

These are pretation is unusual and rarely to thing about the produ the

things of the long ago, but they are he met with on the English stage, opportunity, servis

Rubens, through luck or lack of to be almost this play by an English dramatist still very much alive.

which is, however, no more unjust should be the first that has been

Foreign Rolex,

sacrosanct. in its treatment of foreign nation- written about Jadwiga. It is bing! It is particularly in piecer set in a characteristics than foreigners

Artist-Diplomat. stayed at the Teatr Polski (where a foreign lund, with characters SUD-jure to us.

I have seen at the Co-"Sir Peter."

Rubens is rarely alluded to as Shaw's plays are done), and the per-posed to be speaking a foreign ton-medie Francaise

Yet he was an Eng. sheer burlesques formance will form part of a novo-kue, and especially where the com- of English men and women.

lish knight, having received that ment that exists for the canonisa-plientions are International. that less they were ludicrously untrue honour from Charles 1. during his

convention must be given free head, the French would not have accept visit to England in 1630. The play is in three acts and ten Take "The Ace." tur example. This led them. Was Bernard Shaw con- He did not come to London #cenes. Chiefly, it deals with Jud. is a fine play magnificently arted cerned with making his Joan, ne-an artist but as a diplomat sent by wiga's sacrifice in giving up the man["aperially by Mr. Raymond Massey ressarily speaking English, essen-Philip of Spain to negotiato with she loved and, for the sake of her has to play a scene in French tally and distinctively French? the English king in the matter of country, marrying the Grand Duke chateau with a girl supposed to be in aspirations and all those quali- the Netherlands, of Lithuania. It is noteworthy that French. The character he plays les affecting Joan's tragedy, yos, He found time, however, to de Poland was a peace during her talks French

very badly, under-perhaps, but in superficial detalla corate the Banqueting Ball st reign, except when she led an army stands It indifferently, and in not at all. He had as much dig-Whitehall and to paint "The Bless- and recovered the lost province of beautifully rendered mood he ex-dain of the excrescences and ex-ings of Peace," now in the Na- Ruthenia without a single ensuality, plains all his hopes and fears au an ternals of nationality as Shakes-tional Gallery.

tion of this famous patriot.

In

that

I

Mr. Hole't play was, of course, Birman to the French girl, who be-peare,

for the last act.

>MR. SEAN O'CASEY'S

a dell.

Un-

03

written in England, but it is being eves that his declamation in just NATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS but its manifestations are many acted in Warsaw in a translation by love-making. We have to Recept Floryan Soblenowski. Mrs. John the fact that, although Mr. Maneey national characteristics of the hu-pressions of one country may closs-

idiomatio But how can we convey the chief and diverse. The Galsworthy has selected the music speaking English with

Ac- clous Canadian accent, he is a German soul? Every country has its ly parallel those of another. man flying officer talking German same thing in one country as in not to be supremely difficult,

distinctions. Courage is much the cordingly to transpose them ought whilst bi companion, a real

Janother. The way of showing it Yet our stage is constantly guilty differs greatly. An Englishman of reducing the terms" and phrases may be ashamed of it, a French- of foreign folk to the English de- He has, moreover, under him man may glory in it, a German take nomination regardless of the incon- It as a matter of duty, a Japanese gruity and absurdity of so doing, private soldiers who, in order to regard it as part of his religion. Here, perhaps, is food for an actor's convey to un that they are of a lower class. have to speak Cock Intelligence is a universal thing, thought,

NEW PLAY.

For Publication This Autumn.

NON-POLITICAL PLOT.

Hughes,

French girl, talking nothing but French, is complying with the ver |acity of the situation.

red-

ney English, although they are ra- bidly German in every other Mr. Sean O'Carey's new play, pect. He is surrounded by other "Within the Gates," which, after officers who are palpably English,| his long silence, is completed, will whom we have to accept a better- be published this autumn.

class heel-clicking Germans, The play in non-political. Ita The Author's Difficulty, setting in Hyde Park. It deals] How in an English transistor or with every phase of life in thefauthor to give an English audience | Park. It will have incidental music a correct idea of social differences with original songs.

The music and conversational idiomatic dia- is being written by Mr. Herbert Linctions without convention?

When producing Mr. John Drink-{ The play will probably be pro-water's version of Mussolini's play duced in London, but. Dublin is al-on Napoleon, 1 was much exercit- ready speculating on the prob- English writer had, in order to od. by the circumstance that the ability of its acceptance by the Abbey Theatre.

give a scene of Belgian peasantry It is five years since the Abbey our, made his peasants speak a a rich and accurately rustic flav- Theatre directors rejected "The rustle English suggestive of Semer- Silver Tassie." The rejection pro-est or Devon. Yet how is your un- voked an acrimonious correspon-happy author able to convey any dance between Mr. O'Casey and idea of social distinctions in Mr. Yeats. Subsequently Mr. foreign. folk without calling upon O'Casey refused an offer of mem- credulity to help him? An *** Bership of the Irish Academy of tremaly clavey zomer

ed-fn this verý plly, “Thà Ass,” 'by

Letters

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