THEATER CHRONICLE
THE DRAMA: AN EXTINCT SPECIES?
Nobody denies that something
is
wrong. People have been
saying that it's because the theater is badly organized, and other
people have been replying: not at all, it's simply that there's a dearth
of good plays. There being a great deal of obvious truth on both sides,
it
may be wise to sort out some of the points.
To begin with "good plays." We are concerned with two orders
of merit not always clearly enough distinguished: talent and genius.
Genius lies to a great extent outside any useful discussion because noth–
ing we can say or do will produce
it.
It comes uncalled for or not at
all. What can be discussed is the welcome we give it. And the sad fact
is that we welcome it too little and too late. We welcome
it
when it
is
safe to do so, when
it
is practically impossrble
not
to do so. The great
modern example is Bernard Shaw. To have welcomed
him
in the
1890s, when he was dangerous, would have been enterprising. To accept
him after 1910, as the theater mostly did, was to accept the accepted.
By that time the public had learned how to ward off Shaw's blows:
critics thought him a clown, admirers thought him a classic; whichever
way you look at it, he was through.
Since the death of Shaw, how many geniuses are left in the field?
Readers will agree that they are few, even
if
they don't accept my
nominations. And among the few I should have liked to nominate, some
are not accurately defined as playwrights. Charlie Chaplin and Eduardo
de Filippo, though they have taken on the dramatist's chores and per–
formed them admirably, achieve greatness
in
the composite capacity of
actor-playwright, a special and indissoluble union of actor, role, and
author. I am left, it seems to me, with but two names: Bertolt Brecht
and Sean O'Casey. Yet even two are enough to make us modify the
proposition that there are no new plays for us to do. The plays are
there. The question is why we don't do them. The answer cannot lie
wholly in their authors' politics which are not (for present purposes)
very different from Bernard Shaw's. It lies, rather,
in
time: Brecht
and O'Casey are now where Shaw was before 1910. When they have
"dated," Broadway will no doubt announce that they are "timely."
Genius, notoriously, is tardily recognized in all the arts, and, though
