THEATER CHRONICLE
LITERATURE ON BROADWAY
Adapted by Sidney Kingsley from Koestler's novel about a
former Bolshevik destroyed by Stalinism and his
own
sophistry,
Darkness
At Noon
makes a fairly effective play. The novel was good, the adapta–
tion is intelligent, and the Frederick Fox
decor,
representing a prison
cell and corridor, is ingenious. Indeed only a story as strong as Koestler's
could keep its face straight in the presence of this versatile set, which
is constantly rearranging itself or dissolving into transparency in obedi–
ence to the hero's need of communicating with his fellow-prisoners, his
examiners, or his past. Even then it threatens at moments to take over,
like Frankenstein.
If
decorum is preserved, that fact is also due to the
good acting of Claude Rains as Rubashov the Old Bolshevik and of
Walter
J.
Palance as Gletkin the new Stalinist. With his curious mortuary
charm of physique and voice, this Gletkin is a believable monster, a real
creation instead of a mere caricature. Palance gives rein to whatever may
be
daemonica1ly appealing in the power, clairvoyance, and composure
of a representative of the police state-appealing, that is, to one who like
Rubashov helped to father that state.
If
Rubashov, in the course of his
degeneration, cames actually to feel love for Gletkin, exchanging his role
of indignant paternalism for that of a kind of praise-hungry child, this
development remains emotionally intelligible to the audience. Yet
Rains, with his rare talent for giving authority, together with an easy
grace, to the portrayal of public men, maintains Rubashov's salience
in the play and brings the Old Bolshevik's story momentarily to life out
of the groaning past of Lubianka prison.
As in the novel, Rubashov capitulates and dies and the action ends
in the total defeat of the individual. This grim outcome, reproduced
with terrible monotony in recent political literature, is here implicit in
the play's materials and theme; and in
Billy Budd,
the play made by
Louis O . Coxe and Robert Chapman from Melville's story, a similar
outcome is given by very different circumstances. Both are "morality
