THEATRE
CHRONICLE
VERY early in the present theatrical season, two war plays
came to Broadway. One Was Mr. Sidney Howard's drama-
tization of Humphrey Cobb's excellent novel,
Paths of Glory.
The theme here was that of the butchery of common soldiers
by the French high command. When it reached the boards,
the actual butchery was that of Mr. Howard.
Striving, evi-
dently, to write a play which would resemble a movie scenario
as closely as possible, Mr. Howard was eminently successful
in ruining every potentiality in Mr. Cobb's moving story.
The other war play,
If This Be Treason,
by Reverend John
Haynes Holmes and Reginald Lawrence,
presented the
Christian cure to all evils--a
sermon.
It could have been
very appropriately titled
There Is a Santa Claus,
or even
better,
The Redeemer Has A'risen.
Now at the tag end of
this season, we get a young playwright
who achieves what
older and wiser heads have failed to accomplish-a moving,
impassioned, and biting anti-war play.
Mr. Irwin Shaw's one-act play,
Bury the Dead,
was orig-
inally produced by the New Theatre League, and (like
Waiting for Lefty,
by which it was apparently influenced) it
became an immediate sensation;
it is now appearing on
Broadway under commercial auspices.
The play opens with a squad of soldiers digging graves for
six privates, who fell winning a yard of bloody mud on a
hill; the generals had ordered it taken. There is some bitingly
ironic dialogue between the soldiers and the sergeant in
command; this dialogue sets the tone f~r Mr. Shaw's maca-
bre fantasy. The clergy comes to say the last prayers for the
dead heroes. As a Catholic priest and a Jewish rabbi simul-
taneously intone the prayers for the dead, the six corpses
arise and refuse to allow themselves to be buried. They stand
in their unfilled graves and become a national problem, even
a national scandal. They are heedless to the entreaties and
the philosophy of captains, generals, and doctors.
After all other appeals and efforts have failed, the women
of the six corpses are called. The wives, sweethearts mothers
and sisters of the dead soldiers come to the unfill~d grave~
to beg their men to lie down and allow thmselves to be
buried. In the interchange of conversation between the
women and the corpses, the six lives of the latter are un-
folded. The dreams and wishes, the hopes and attitudes, the
point of view of each man are revealed. And still the dead
refuse to be buried. There then follows an impressionistic
ending, filled with voices, each repeating a representative
and meaningful remark. The dead come out of their graves
as one of the generals attempts to fill them with more lead.
They march. The living-specifically,
the squad of privates
who have been digging their graves-march after them.
Here, by introducing an actual physical impossibility, Mr.
Shaw has succeeded in attaining a heightened aM impas-
sioned sense of the horror and the meaninglessness of war.
He has written a play with teal meaning and importance.
Nobody interested seriously in the theatre should miss seeing
it-or,
if that is impossible, reading it.
Bury the Dead
is
one of the very few plays of the present season that has a
right to survive.
Despite its vitality, its impact, and its sensational qualities,
there are certain remarks which I feel must be offered. Fol-
PAR TIS A N RE V lEW
lowing the presentation of this play-his first-Mr.
Shaw
immediately shipped out to Hollywood. He might have done
himself much better if he had remained at home and re-
written his play. If the entire play were carefully rewritten
and thought through, it would be much more than it already
is. Here Mr. Shaw has conceived a vital theme, an interest-
ing, if strange, manner of presenting it, and some real ideas.
He has, however, failed to think them through completely.
In consequence, he has bogged down and failed to finish his
task. The way in which he has bogged down is the failure
to.integrate two strains in his play, one of realism, the other
of fantasy and symbolism. The play proceeds as a gripping,
macabre fantasy to the point where the women are brought
onto the stage. Then, following an impressionistic and swift
series of blackouts, we get six conversations, spaced one after
the other. These conversations do manage to unfold informa-
tion concerning the backgrounds and the pasts of the six
corpses. At the same time, they snap the strain of fantasy.
From symbolism, we come into naturalistic realism. The
direction here, likewise, fails to help the play. Up to this
point, the play has been maintained by the strange differen-
tiation of the dead and the living. The dead hardly talk.
This line of demarcation suddenly breaks own. The dead act
like the living. The women nag, plead, beg, argue. In the
course of these dialogues, the tense, shattering illusion which
Mr. Shaw has created, snaps utterly. In consequence, some
of his impact is needlessly dissipated.
Had he cut these
dialogues to a minimum, and had the direction been more
intelligent,
this snapping might have been prevented. Addi-
tionally, there is unevenness of writing in these dialogues.
The last one is crude and obvious in a technical sense. A wife
nags one of the corpses, telling him that all his life he has
been a spineless mechanic making eighteen dollars and fifty
cents a week. (On the whole, this part is reminiscent of
Waiting for Lefty).
Shrilly, the author lets her keep repeat-
ing eighteen dollars and fifty cents a week until the audience
gets the point, and gets it again, and then again. Such ob-
viousness does not help the play. It overstresses a simplicity.
These criticisms notwithstanding,
it is necessary to ·reiterate
that
Bury the Dead
in an event in the theatre.
The Chicago Repertory Group, founded in 1934, has been
making a gallant effort to establish a respectable drama in a
city where the cultural level is largely dictated by band lead-
ers, night club entertainers,
New York columnists, and Hol-
lywood gossip reporters. At present, they are running week-
ends to packed houses, their program consisting of a revue,
Innocent Bystander,
and a one-act adaptation of
The Young
Go
First,
adapted and directed by Charles DeSheim, from
the play by Peter Martin and George Scudder. Mr. De
Sheim's adaptation presents a play with rich dialogue, an
authentic style in writing, and a closely knit structure. Most
of the actors have had little professional training, and some
of them are workers developed in this group. The results
attained are more than merely encouraging. There is a real
aliveness, a genuine sense of life to the production. A group
of young actors playing the kids in a CCC camp reminds one
of the juveniles in
Dead End.
After seeing this performance,
one feels as if one had lived in a CCC camp and knew its
occupants. The same cannot be said {or the revue.
Innocent
Bystander
is a filler, amateurish in every respect.
If the Chicago Repertory Group can struggle against the
deadness and inertia which turns Chicago into an overgrown
hick village, it is going to be a surprising addition to the
revolutionary theatre.
JAMES T. FARRELL
