THEATRE
CHRONICLE
Basing his story quite obviously on c;vents connected with
the Sacco-Vanzetti case, Mr. Maxwell Anderson, in
Winter-
set,
has attempted to utilize modern materials for a classical
tragedy written in blank verse. The action of the play takes
place in a section beneath one of the Manhattan bridges;
and, in passing, it should be remarked that M.r. Jo Miel-
ziner's poetically realistic bridge set rendering this atmosphere
is as beautiful as one may exepcet to see in many a season.
The drama grows out of -events and personalities connected
with the framing and execution of an anarchist, Romagna. A
lad named Garrh who was a member of the gang (corres-
ponding to the- Morelli gang) that committed the crime for
which Romagna died, lives under the bridge with his father,
Esdras, and his sister, Miriamne. Trock, leader of this gang,
is obsessed with anxiety lest a re-opening of the case send'
him to the chair, and he is determined to wipe out everyone
of his partners-in-crime;
his threat to bump Garth off forces
the lad to remain exiled in his own home. Two other person-
alities in the case wander into this section. One is Judge
Gaunt (Judge Thayer) who presided at the framed trial of
the innocent man; now, he is tormented and driven half-
mad with a bad. conscience, and he stops strangers on the
street to tell them that he did not send an innocent man to
the chair. The other is :Mio, Romagna's son, who follows
clue' after clue, in order to wreak revenge and to clear his
father's name before the law; his trail has led him to Garth.
He and Miriamne fall in love; gradually, he uncovers proof
of his father's innocence; he confronts Judge Gaunt with
these facts, and there follows a lengthy discussion on the
nature of the courts, the Judge Jesuitically defending him-
self; he tells the police, and points to Track as one of the real
murderers; the police laugh at him. In the end, Trock real-
izes that he k.nows too much, and every avenue of escape is
cut off; if he leaves the house of Esdras, he will be shot
d::>wn.He leaves, not so much from internal compulsion as
from the necessity of his dying if Mr. Anderson is going to
fulfil his intentions and write a tragedy. During the entire
third act, Mio is preparing to die, with exclamations and
declamations; he attempts to escape and is shot down. Enacted
by Mr. Burgess Meredith,
Mia dies all over the stage.
Miriamne then shouts out that she knows the truth and will
speak it; she is shot down. Esdras, who represents mellowed
and philosophical old age in the play, brings down the curtain
with a recitation on the theme that man should be unsub-
mittingly defiant to fate.
Mr. Anderson has here used parallels to the Sacco-Van-
zetti case in such a way that he achieves distortion. For in-
stance, one of the most important sources of motivation is
Trock's anxiety lest the case be re-opened. Socially, this is
unrealistic and creates a false impression of the conduct of
th-e state in class-struggle cases. As we know, at the time of
the Sacco- V anzetti case, Vanzetti was first tried for a crime
in Bridgewater,
convicted and then brought into court for
the South Braintree murder as a convicted criminal. All ef-
forts to re-open that case, all attempts to introduce important
evidence clearing Vanzetti were disregarded;
similarly all
efforts to introduce additional evidence, such as that point-
PARTISAN
REVIEW AND ANVIL
ing toward the Morelli gang, were disregarded.
If such a
case could not be re-opened when it was on, how,"years later,
would it be re-opened? In order for us to believe Mr. Ander-
son's motivation here, we then must assume that the state
acts differently than we know it to act; in consequence, an
important
source of motivation is, to say the least, most
picayune and special; and Mr. Anderson is not trying to
write a special, but a representative play. Thus, one whole
basis of motivation just crumbles, destroying the possibility
of one accepting the play. Similarly, we find in his character-
ization of Judge Gaunt, an illustration of judicial conscience
that is a severe strain on our credibility, particularly since
we know something of Judge Thayer. As a judge, Gaunt is
unquestionably beyond recognition.
These criticisms are not totally extra-dramatic.
They in-
volve the assumptions we must make with the author, if we
are to "believe" in his play. One m\lst assume that even if
Mia does establish the proof of his father's guilt, the case can
be re-opened; one must assume that the judge's tormented
conscience is consistent with both his character and his official
position. I, for one, could not make these assumptions, and
hence to me the play is internally phony, and its tragedy be-
comes bathos. In addition, Mr. Anderson's intentions further
ravage the consistency of his motivation. The actions of his
characters do not grow consistently out of antecedently
relevant causes; they are built out of universals;
in con-
sequence a fictionization of the Sacco- V anzetti case is used as
a mere peg on which to hang a demonstration of
a priori
universals-man's
destiny, and the four dark. winds of fate,
love, hate, revenge. The characters thus act in consonance
with generalized categories of hIJman conduct,
and the
categories make the action, instead of the action making the
categories. The tragedy here is not one of necessity, but of
preconception. Thus when gangster guns bark death to Mia,
in the name of fate and destiny, Mr. Anderson is falling into
the ridiculous.
In addition,
his poetry is not more than
ordinary and derivative. The themes, insofar as they emerge,
seem to be that love cures hate, that man must meet his fate
with unsubmitting defiance-they emerge as platitudes only.
Winterset
is confused, muddleheaded and internally phony;
in addition, it gives a distorted impression of the historic
events which it parallels.
Mr. Sidney Kingsley's
Dead End
is one of th-e most suc-
cessful hits of the season. In his preceding play,
Men in
White,
Mr. Kingsley had both a hit and a Pulitzer prize
winner. That was just a trumped-up contrivance of over-
romanticized dramaturgy,
with one good scene set around an
operating table. At least, such is my judgment of the play
after having read it. (Published by
CO'llici, Friede.)
And
although I frankly believe that it is not worth reading, I
urgently suggest that my readers purchase this book; the play
can be disregarded, but there are thirty-odd footnotes gener-
ously appended by Mr. Kingsley, and these should be read.
In fact, the simplest and quickest way I know of securing a
scientific and medical education is by reading these ex-
pository footnotes of Mr. Kingsley's. Early in the first scene,
a character refers to the X-ray, and thus, Mr. Kingsley has
an illuminating footnote telling us that "it has ...
become
so important that today a good physician would not set a
broken finger without it." Similarly, in these notes, one can
find such information on surgery as the following: "Surgery,
which is a fine art requiring, in addition to other things, the
digital sensitivity of a pianist, demands incessant practice."
