Theater Chronicle
SOMETHING ABOUT THE WEATHER
THE FATAL WEAKNESS.
By George Kelly. Royale Theater
CRAIG's
WIFE.
By George Kelly. Playhouse Theater.
BoRN YESTERDAY.
By Garson Kanin. Lyceum Theater.
THE KEY.
By Ramon Sender. Knickerbocker Theater.
G
EORGE KELLY is the unique case of a writer who is a box-office
success, an esoteric excitement, and a name utterly unregarded by
the serious intellectual public, which imagines, in all probability, that he
is George Kaufman. About twenty-five years ago he wrote three plays,
The Show-Off, The Torch-Bearers,
and
Craig's Wife,
which have been
filed away in the memories of such veteran dramatic critics as Joseph
Wood Krutch as superior but normal examples of American realism.
Today he is being discovered by
Theatre Arts Monthly,
while independ–
ently and indeed irrelevantly, Ina Claire is playing in his
The Fatal
Weakness
and Judith Evelyn has opened in a revival of
Craig's Wife,
to
audiences whose aesthetic faculties have settled gluttonously in the
stomach and whose sole anxiety is the gain or loss of
a good evening's
entertainment.
This after-dinner sluggishness on the part of his public must explain
the fact that he has been allowed to pass unremarked, for he is the
queerest writer on view in America. His plays, though they are set in
drawing rooms, are not polite comedies; though they make a fetish of
observation, they are not realistic; though they are performed by actors,
their complete cast of characters is not listed on the program, their real
heroes and heroines being glasses of water, pocketbooks, telephones, and
after-dinner coffee-cups.
It
is difficult to describe a George Kelly play
to anyone who has not seen several, simply because it is not like anything
else while on the surface it resembles every play one has ever been to.
The curtain goes up on what is recognizable as a drawing room;
a recognizable Irish maid comes in and begins to set things straight on
the tables. The telephone rings; the maid answers it. Soon the lady of
the house appears, a plausible matron in a girdle; before long, her hus–
band is on the stage, a hearty, successful American businessman. He pecks
her on the cheek; they start to discuss some family matter or local event:
someone is expected on a train, the drama league is giving a play, the
man across the street has married a new wife. A plot begins to form:
