to tell what is happening to them. In the novel, one issue
of the paper is written,
and truckloads of Fascisti descend
upon Fontamara,
murdering all they catch, and driving the
others into the mountains.
In the play, the curtain comes
down as the paper is being written.
Silone here depends for his major effects upon an irony
that is both delightful and cutting. In the drama, the irony
is reduced to a minor key. The bulk of the novel deals with
the life of the Fontamarans,
their humor, their interests,
their economic and social position, and behind this, with the
unfolding of how Fascism works upon their lives as a process.
Fascism, as a process, is thus the basis of the novel. Mr.
Wolfson has shifted the emphasis somewhat in his adapta-
tion. It centers around the agitator or Unknown Hand.
Thus, the play is developed in terms of the familiar Theatre
Union
lift
pattern, and in his final scene, he rings down the
curtain with the usual Theatre Union
lift
ending. In so do-
ing, he has concluded his play on a note of needless anti-
climax. The previous scene has presented Viola in jail. The
Unknown Hand has been set free because of Viola's spurious
confession. Suffering under torture, Viola sends words that
he is prepared to tell everything.
When an investigator
comes, handing Viola a copy of an underground paper which
has just been received Viola sees his name in print, and
reads aloud: "VIV A VIOLA BERARDO!"
He does not
confess. Here is the ending of the play. It contains genuine
lift. The scene following this in the play is obvious re-
iteration.
In the novel, where the emphasis is different, it
has weight.
Despite such efforts to attain the characteristic
lift
pat-
tern,
Bitter Stream
and
Fontamara
supplement one another.
Taken together,
they provide an unmistakable sense of
Fascism, and of its working out in terms of human destinies.
Both have wit, humor, drama.
Once
Bitter Stream
got
under way-after
the first two scenes which were crude-it
became a genuine and an exciting experience.
The Brooklyn Progressive Players in their first effort to-
ward the establishment of a theatre in Brooklyn, presented
Blood on the Moon,
a play about Nazi Germany by Claire
and Paul Sifton. The general construction of incidents in
the play is carefully thought out, built together, and rich
in dramatic possibilities. It is the story of a middle class
family that is one sixth Jewish, and the action begins on the
day that Hitler becomes Chancellor.
All members of the
family are representative of what is best in the German
middle class. The father is one of the most famous surgeons
in Germany. The mother is an intelligent worrian, devoted
to her home and her children. One son is a talented young
pianist and also a Communist.
The other is a keen student
who promises to follow in his father's footsteps. The daugh-
ter is a beautiful and healthy girl of the type that should
bear fine sons. She is in love with a Nazi Storm Trooper
who compensates for his intellectual vacuity by the splendor
of his physique.
The Nazi campaign of anti-Semitism wrecks the career of
every member of the family. The father is stripped of his
position, and his ability to practice his science. The pianist
son is first forcibly prevented from giving his first concert,
and then he is carted off to a concentration camp because he
is a Marxist. The other son is beaten up and driven out of
the University. The daughter is placed in the third classifica-
tion of females-those who may marry but must not bear
children. Her marriage is ruined. The mother being of pure
26
German stock, is terrorized with threats. Finally, in order
to save her youngest son and permit him to get to Switzer-
land where he may continue his education, she leaves the
father, and plans to divorce him.
One important
point must be made anent the general
theme, It obviously intends to reveal the sheer idiocy and
brutality of Nazi theories of race. It succeeds in its inten-
tion. However, nearly every character complains of his fate
because he or she is being tortured as Jews when they are
only a sixth part Jewish. Such complaints are true to charac-
ter, and do not violate the play; however, it is necessary to
suggest that these are, at best, only superficial arguments
against the Nazi theories of race. The characters are mid-
dle class. They love Germany.
They consider themselves
Germans. They are anxious for the continuance of the Ger-
many they have known-and that is the Germany of the
Weimar Republic. The basic contrasts in the play are, then,
contrasts between Fascism, and the liberal bourgeois demo-
cracy, a counterposition of Fascism and the attitudes of the
liberal sections of the bourgeoisie. This demands to be stated
so that the meaning of the play be made clear. There is no
objection to such a counterposition
per se,
and the Siftons
have made it consistent to character and situation.
Blood on the
"11
oon
is sincere and well thought out in its
general structure of relationships between character and
character,
and character and situation.
In various scenes,
when one after another of the characters is trapped,
the
situations are ones of great dramatic possibility. Also, though
it is played to some extent by non-professionals,
the playing
is satisfactory,
particularly in the interpretation of the role
of the daughter.
Yet with all its laudable intentions,
there is something
seriously wrong with the play. The authors seem convinced
of the notion that there is only one way in which a character
in a drama can face and meet catastrophe-by a long speech.
The only dramatist I know of who could portray tragedy
by
long speeches
was Shakespeare,
and he was not always
successful at it. Further,
the long speeches in
Blood on the
Moon
are directed at the audience. Their internal and in-
tegral meaning in the play is made secondary to this appeal
across the floodlights. Successively, dramatic possibilities are
ruined by speeches. The Storm Trooper makes one when he
tells the daughter that they cannot have children. The dra-
matic situation is lost. The pianist makes a longer speech
when the Storm Trooper comes to arrest him; the jmpact
of the scene is destroyed by a surplusage of words on brother-
hood and handshaking.
In the final act, the family is being
broken up. The mother is leaving. The father is driven to
his knees out of desperation and despair. There is a long
prayer. Here the Siftons have ineptly spoiled what could
have been one of the most beautiful moments seen on a
stage in many a season. The father is a scientist. If we
could have seen him driven to his knees to pray, when no
prayp.rs could come, the authors would have achieved what
they meant to achieve; by their lengthy prayer, they rro-
duced boredom.
Blood on the Moon
woefully requires a blue pencil and
a pair of scissors. If it is ag~in produced, and the speeches
are cut and the writing sharpened up, it can be a most
moving drama.
The only possible interpretation of
Macbeth
which I can
accept is the classical one. It views Macbeth as the victim
of ambition. Lacking the necessary firmness of purpose to
J
UN E,
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