THEATER CHRONICLE
The Broadway season didn't really get started until the very
end of October. Then, within a week, four celebrated American crafts–
men, Lillian Hellman, Maxwell Anderson, Marc Blitzstein, and S. N.
Behrman, served up four "concoctions-all adaptations but all highly
characteristic of the adapters in choice and treatment and all designed,
it might seem fiendishly, to show up the drives and defects of four
celebrated American craftsmen.
Lillian Hellman chose to adapt a French play,
Montserrat
by an
Algerian, Emmanuel Robles-and one is not surprised to learn that it
has been found acceptable in Eastern Europe. It is set in Venezuela in
1812 during the Spanish Occupation, and the action consists of the at–
tempt of a hard-bitten Spanish officer, Izquiredo, to force a young ideal–
istic Spanish soldier, Montserrat, who has gone over to the people, to
reveal the hiding place of Bolivar. Izquiredo has six people brought in
from the public square and tells them that unless they can persuade
Montserrat to tell his secret they will all be shot, The individuals picked
up "at random" are a business man (the capitalist), a wood-carver (the
artist), an actor (the hanger on), a mother (is there a mothers' class?)
and a boy and girl (the proletariat). The first four feverishly try to
persuade Montserrat to betray the leader; the last two urge
him
not to.
In the end all of them are taken out and shot in the hearing if not in
the sight of the audience.
The ostensible message of the play is that the end justifies the
means, and on this level it conveys no conviction or belief, is intellect–
ually stale and mechanically contrived. The real purport of the piece
is quite different and, I am sure, quite unintended.
Montserrat
is a ruth–
less assault on the sensibilities and on humane values. Izquiredo is its
hero, and its real message is not that cruelty is sometimes necessary for
the achievement of a good end but that the power to inflict or with–
hold cruelty, and the wielders of such power, are fascinating and en–
viable. Emlyn Williams (Izquiredo) is an excellent actor while William
Redfield (Montserrat) is 11ot; but Williams' superior performance alone
does not account for Izquiredo's glamour. His part is written that way-
