It is all too tragic, too seriously conceived, too consciously the great young actress who can do second-rate poetic drama. She has a certain gift for comedy which she suppresses, in the interest not of the myth she creates, not of the character, but of herself. There is another flaw in the piece, and that may be the fault of the audience. The highest comic moment is when Mr Merivale, as the Prince, kisses the tutor—a precise parallel to the highest dramatic moment, an act earlier, when the Princess does it. The second kiss was accepted as being also dramatic; it should be pure comedy.
I should be happy to believe that every player in every piece required the director to announce, at the beginning, what the style of the piece was, and that every audience required all the players to be
in that style. Galsworthy's Windows and Molnar's Launnzi were both directed without any such integral conception of the style of the play, and the disastrous failure of the latter was the result. It was a psychological drama in which the external events after the first act meant nothing, and it seemed all played for these events. If Windows turn out a success—it will not be the first time The Theatre Guild has Shaw to thank.
I had the good fortune to see The Ziegfeld Follies after time and pressure of time had eliminated most of its excrescences. In the thirty-odd remaining numbers there are still some dreadfully soft spots, rapturously acknowledged by the audience (as is the Garden of Kama in the Greenwich Village Follies by an audience which underrates the fine macabre work of the Two Briants and the other excellent acrobats there). Even apart from these spots Mr Ziegfeld's offering is not enough of a climax to be a farewell. For one thing there isn't enough humour, nor are there enough good songs. The best song was introduced for Miss Ann Pennington and is, I think, by Louis A. Hirsch. Miss Pennington and Eddie Cantor substituted for Bert Wheeler, and he must be very good indeed to require both of them as a makeweight. They cheered up and jazzed up the piece considerably. Miss Brice by a wise decision cut out all her sentimental songs and scenes, and some of her comic ones are in her highest vein. Edna Leedom and Linda are the other high spots—not to speak of the high swinging of an attractive chorus.
