DRAMA NO W
247
is a leading theme, overtly or not, of New York wit. The audience
recalls having heard those queer French and Italian names
in
college
(this audience is very collegiate) and how silly they sound when
shown up by artists whom the veracious box office approves! The
burlesque humor of Perelman and Nash is polysyllabic and allusive
in form; its gist, its ground base, is a bronx cheer to culture.
4.
On the next rung of the ladder we find plays in which some
attention is paid to certain perennial tasks of the drama such as
telling the truth about people's lives and problems. My specimen is
a play which has been called "the most important event in our native
American drama in twenty years,"
Anna Lucasta
by "an extremely
successful writer in Hollywood," Philip Yordan. Mr. Yordan doesn't
always tell the truth (he isn't a box office) but he does take a look
at people and their problems. A Harlem family plans to get the money
of a young Negro just aiTivcd from the South by manying him off
to one of their number who has hitherto been a prostitute. Being one
of those soulful whores she falls in love with the boy in earnest. The
wedding day arrives but before nightfall the father has revealed the
whole story of Anna to the boy's family. In despair Anna returns to
her whoring without waiting to consult her bridegroom. A tragic
ending is indicated. But Mr. Yordan learnt all about endings in
Hollywood. The public, which after all is barely one remove from
the box office, demands happy ones. Clearly the hero of the play has
to be soulful too. He must still want to marry Anna in spite of every–
thing, and her attempts at suicide must fail. The play ends on the
proverbial note of hope.
It would be no use telling Mr. Yordan it won't do. He knows
it will. He knows the truth from the one who never lies. A critic called
the play "a combination of
Anna Christie
and
You Can't Take It
With You."
And what a combination that is! All the pleasures of
the sordid with no morbid, mournful, modernistic, conclusion. And
can Mr. Yordan write slick dialogue? A machine couldn't do it better.
And does Mr. Yordan love the Negro people? His original choice
was a Polish-American milieu but, says the jacket, "eventually he was
persuaded to shift the locale to Harlem." And can Mr. Yordan see
the importance of persuasion? Negroes are lovable. They're nasty
too, anc! you can put coarser words in their mouths than BroaJway
would otherwise accept. And they're always manying prostitutes.
Oh yes, Mr. Yordan knows the truth.
