Theater Chronicle
GERONTION
HENRY
VIII.
By William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. International
Theater.
JoHN GABRIEL BoRKMAN.
By Henrik Ibsen. International Theater.
LADY WINDERMERE's FAN.
By Oscar Wilde. Cort Theater.
THE DucHESS OF MALFI.
By John Webster. Ethel Barrymore Theater.
No ExiT.
By Jean-Paul Sartre. Biltmore Theater.
T
HE
G.l.'s have gone home and Broadway is at peace. The Rolls Royces
of former days like large perambulators gently deposit their muffled
elderly couples before the lighted marquees; the noise of the big musicals
is drowned in the spoken word, and, taking advantage of this general
atmosphere of armistice, culture emerges from its wartime shelter-Oscar
Wilde and Eva Le Gallienne find the enemy departed.
For the first time in many years, the New York theater-goer this
season can step into almost any theater lobby with that sense of virtuous
expectation, of responsibility and enlightenment, that the drama pecu–
liarly awakes and that makes the theater for New York what the cafe
is for Paris, a pleasure and also a pride, a habit and a ritual, a diversion
and a duty. To the extent that America has any communal life at all, it
is centered in the New York theater; here is the last refuge of sociability
and humanism-the ordinary middling man, who has given up nearly all
universal pretensions, still considers himself a competent judge of acting
and a competent critic of plays. The movies annihilate him in their
darkness and do not ask his opinion; the symphony is over his head,
and
if
he participates at all in it, it is with the largest and limpest of
his emotions. Only the theater can he approach with his faculties alert
and unabashed; he sees it as a kind of courtroom and himself as a
qualified juror whose verdict is, from moment to moment, solicited.
This little arena of judgment was commandeered by the war. De–
spoiled of its provincialism, which was a necessity to its mood and its
identity, the theater became a great barracks and entertained the boys
from Arkansas and Minnesota with imitation movies
(Winged Victory,
Lady in the Dark, The Eue of St. Mark),
pasted-up magazine stories
(Junior Miss, My Sister Eileen, Life With Father),
and high-salaried
burlesque shows. The sound of talk, which since the eighteenth century
