THEATER CHRONICLE
63
has been the normal tone of the drama, the tone, that is, of rational
intercourse, was seldom heard, and though there were revivals of classics,
these classics were, for the most part
(Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, The
Tempest),
staples of the high-school curriculum which were free from
the minority taint. Chekhov, possibly because of the interest in Russia,
was visible in three productions; Shaw in two, I believe, and the second
of these,
Pygmalion,
was, from most people's point of view, a stage ver–
sion of a movie.
Demobilized, the theater has returned to its antique habits with
fresh energy. The old boxlike stage is back, confining its group of people
to the limits of a single room; the interest in the mechanics of produc–
tion (the revolving stage, the stage on different levels, the use of a movie
screen, the use of a loudspeaker) has been replaced by an interest in
the details of costume and
decor
or else by an interest in acting: Lady
Windermere's fan becomes an
objet de virtu
as powerful as Desdemona's
handkerchief; on the other hand, Maxwell Anderson does a play about
Joan of Arc which declines to avail itself of the medieval license for
pageantry, but uses a bare rehearsal stage and makes a corselet or a
helmet do for a full suit of armor. Except in the neighborhood of Moss
Hart and Lillian Hellman, there is everywhere in the theater this season
a sense of restored dignity, of limitations accepted and formal conven–
tions embraced. The return of O'Neill and George Kelly and the pre–
dominance of revivals sets the tone; it is an old man's season, garrulous,
unsentimental, reasonable, pessimistic, and, in the manner of Lear and
the late Yeats, contradictory, wilful, and adventurous.
The list of revivals this fall is as eccentric as an old man's reading.
John Gabriel Barkman, Henry VIII, Lady Windermere's Fan, The
Duchess of Malfi, The Playboy of the Western World, Cyrano de Ber–
gerac-what
a bizarre assortment, yet they all, with the exception of
The Playboy,
which is a recognized favorite, have something in common.
They are all curios. Minor works of an established author, like
Barkman
or
Henry VIII,
or
Lady Windermere's Fan (The Importance of Being
Earnest
is the classic), major work of an author who is out of fashion
(Cyrano de Bergerac),
major work of an author who is unknown to
the public at large
(The Duchess of M alfi) ,
they represent collectively
a certain hardihood on the part of their producers. Unfortunately, like a
number of other neglected works, most of them are not very good.
Of
Henry VIII,
the American Repertory Theater made it impos–
sible to form a literary opinion, for between the text and the audience
Miss Le Gallienne and Miss Margaret Webster, the co-sponsors of this
project, laid down a barrage of dust: dirty costumes which seemed to
have been bought complete from a theatrical warehouse flapped across
the stage, windily reciting lines; the Field of the Cloth of Gold was
badly tarnished. This production had a pathos of its own, and Miss Le
