The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 5, 1927, Page 12

#2. Arts.” The Voodoo Orgy of Election “Loud Speaker” Is Biting Satire on American Political Fakery—and Then Some Reviewed by HARBOR ALLEN. EORGE Jean Nathan says the chief trouble with the New York stage is the lack of intelligent critics. If you read the reviews in the newspapers on John Howard Lawson’s “Loud Speaker” (playing at the New Playwrights Theatre, West 52nd St.) you will agree with him. One of them finds the play “vague.” Another refers to the con- structivist setting as “just a dis- tracting thicket of bright green stairways running in every direc- tion.” A third grows excited over the entry of actors on chutes; people don’t do that in real life! Still an- other finds Lawson “overshrieking his mark.” There is nothing “vague” about “Loud Speaker.” The “distracting thicket of bright green stairways” is intelligible enough if you have a lit- tle imagination. The materials from which the play is drawn are so com- monplace and so American that al- most everybody but a professional newspaper critic can understand and enjoy them. If comedy means to you the pert handling of a tea-cup by a gentleman in a frock coat, “Loud Speaker” will be “overshrieking its mark.” But if you are revolution- ist, if you like good coarse burlesque, slashing satire and snappy action, you will be neither puzzled nor bored by this play. “Loud Speaker” is a satirical epic - on American fakery. Every Ameri- can fake is here. Fake religion, fake romance, fake politics, fake news, fake women, the fake “younger gen- eration,” fake booze, fake newspaper confessions, fake radio speeches. The bathing beauty sweetheart, the sob sister, the tabloid reporter, the poli- tical campaign manager, the black bottom dancer, the amorous couple warbling buttery songs in the spot- light; all, all are here, the old famil- iar faces. Like Faragoh, author of “Pinwheel,” Lawson has drawn his material from the tabloids. High- brows sniff. They find him vulgar, commonplace, not quite refined. Once too they sniffed at jazz and at the movies. But that was before Gil- bert Seldes wrote his “Seven Lively Nobody from the Diai has yet come along to proclaim the tab- loid the eighth lively art. “Loud Speaker” tells of the rise to fame of Henry U. Collins, “a good man.” Having salted away his mil- lions, Henry has political aspirations on a “return to decency” platform. While his wife dabbles in religious hokum, his manager i-_des advice on bootleggers, his daughter experi- ments in “flaming youth,” his house is overrun with reporters, and his 1902 bathing beauty dream girl emerges from an Atlantic City past. Henry becomes New York’s “tabloid governor.” He does it with bunk. Nobody before has done the voodoo orgy of an American election the jus- tice it is done in this farce. Elections must have been crying out for just such a farce. You wonder how it could have been passed up. All this is mounted on the first Russian constructivist setting used in America, The Actors Theatre pecked at constructivism in “God Loves Us.” The Neighborhood Play- house gave it a careful bath (one has to delouse these immigrants, you know) in “Pinwheel.” The Play- wrights give it full play. To me it was a revelation. The stage sudden- ly acquired new dimensions, new spa- ciousness, It became a sort of cir- cus, ~ Scenes dovetail, actors flow from one episode into another. You see them enter windows, go upstairs, pause on landings, shout down, form strangely new and exciting pictures. With constructivism a new rush of physical action stirs a paralyzed stage. It’s the sort of setting a JESSIE BUSLEY In George Kelly’ Ss comedy, Mayme,” coming to the Bronx Opera “Daisy House Monday night. Shakespeare or a Schiller would have reveled in. The drawing room boys won’t like it. It’s too big, too new; it isn’t “four walls and a ceiling” (one of them complains); it has to be used with some imagination; it offers too many unexplored corners, corners in which you have to do something besides sit and talk in the fashionable pose of the moment on the fashionable topic of the moment. No wonder they didn’t know what it was. No wonder they thought it “just a distracting thicket of stair- ways.” To me “Loud Speaker” is worth seeing if only to see how con- structivism smashes the flatness of the stage. Let us grant that “Loud Speaker” is not a great play, that it is thin in some places and must be cut in others. It still remains lively, biting entertainment. What I want to know is this: Why do critics who ladle out indulgent reviews to fifty boiler- plate shows now running on Broad- way pour such ill-concealed venom over “Loud Speaker?” Is it true, what I was told some time ago, that they have been “laying for” this new theatre of five young radical play- wrights? Is it because “Loud Speaker” bites, because it doesn’t make compromises, because it hits a rotten thing squarely on the head in- stead of toying with it gracefully, as a gentleman should? Is it be- cause Lawson, for all his pure art theories, here comes down to the forum with straight propaganda? Because he says our governors are asses and our “Miss Americas” whores? And why do they get so hot about it all, these playboys to whom heat is the ultimate vice? Well, why do critics always get hot about a new and penetrating idea? Why do they get hot about new art and new music? Why did they call Shaw “offal” and shower Ibsen with to- matoes? Ask me another. MUSIC Benjamin Wistar Morris and Jo- seph Urban have been selected as architects to design the new Opera House of the Metropolitan Opera Company, which will be erected at Eighth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street. Dmitri Tiomkin, pianist, will give a second recital next Saturday after- noon at Town Hall. — Marjorie Candee appears in a song a Tuesday evening at Steinway Mall. eo cere ER —— CIVIC REPERTORY "SRO, D. AND SAT. CORNER 6 AVE. AND 14 ST, PRICES 5c, $1.10, $1.65. EVA LeGALLIENNE Opening Mon., Mar. 7th—“INHERITORS” By Susan Glaspell WEEK OF MARCH 7 WEEK OF MARCH 14 Mon. Eve:, March 7...... “Inheritors” Mon BAS AG sis 5 oy cers “Cradle Song” Tues, Eve., March 8....“Cradle Song” weN., PERT UDs Fike ce vcoens “Inheritors” Wed. Mat., March 9...... “Inheritors” Wed, Mat., Mar: 16,.... “Cradle Song” Wed. Eve.; March 9, Spec. Mat. Fri., Wed. Eve., Mar. 16....“Three Sisters” Spec. Mt. Thurs., Mar, 17, ‘Cradle Song’ .» “Cradle Song” Mar. 11, “Cradle Song” Thurs, Eve., Mar, 10, “Master Builder” Thurs. Eve., Mar. 17..... “Inheritors” Fri, Eve., March 11....“Cradle Seng” Fri. Eve., Mar, 18...... “Cradle Song” Sat. Mat., March 12... ‘ “Three Sisters” Sat. Mat.,; Mar, 19........ “Inheritors’” Sat, Eve., March 12...... “inheritors” Sat. Eve., Mar, 19...“Master Builder” Neighborhood Playhouse 466 Grand St. Drydock 7516 Every Eve. (except Mon.), Mat. Sat. “PINW HEEL” A play of New York, by Francis Edwards Faragoh. -“One is impressed anew by the virtuosity of the Neighborhood Company which undertakes and which masters all styles.”"—Jeseph Wood Krutch, The Nation. B. P. Now in Its 5th Month THE LADDER By J. FRANK DAVIS WALDORF ‘hea. 50th Street, Eve. 8:30, WINTHROP AMES’ GILBERT & SULLIVAN OPERA CO. Every Eve, (except Thurs.) and Sat. Mats. PIRATES of PENZANCE Thursday Mats, and Eves, Only IOLANTHE PLYMOUTH West 45th Street. Evenings, 8:30. Mats. Thurs. & Sat., 2:30. East of Broadway. Mats. Wed. & Sat. The Theatre Guild Acting Company in BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION GUILD THEATRE 52nd Street, West of Broadway. Eves at 8:30. Matinees THURSDAY and SATURDAY at 2:36 Week of Marca 14—THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV Week of March 21—PYGMALION SIDNEY HOWA RD’S NED McCOBB’S DAUGHTER JOHN GOLDEN THEATRE, 58th § 58th St., East of B’way. Matinees THURSDAY & SATURDAY. Week of March 14—THE SILVER CORD Week of March 21—NED McCOBB’S DAUGHTER Special Matinees of Pirandello’s RIGHT YOU ARE If You Think You Are ~ GUILD THEATRE WEDNESDAY MATINEE MARCH 9. FRIDAY MATINEE MARCH 11, | CIRCLE 5078 A. H. WOODS PRESENTS CRIME A Sensational and Revealing Melodrama of New York’s Underworld by Samuel Shipman and John B. Hymer, with JAMES RENNIE & CHESTER MORRIS and CAST OF 100 ELTINGE THEATRE, WEST 42nd STREET bttuees: Sy eeanetay: 5 and Saturday. Evenings 8:30. Matinees vcehateg Thea., 48 St. W. of B’y. Eves. 8:30] new PLAYWRIGHTS. “theatre Matinees WED. and SAT., 2:30] 52a St. Thea., 306 W. 52a. Columbus 7393 BONNIE |LOUDSPEAKER!::"" Musical Bon Bon with W. 42 St. Rvs. 8:30. Dorothy Burgess, Louis Simon, WALLACK’S Mats. Wed, “e Sat. Wm. Frawley, George Sweet, cuanty’s THEATRE MASQUE What Anne Brought Home A New Comedy Drama “PUPPETS OF PASSION” 45'St., West of B’way Geen sata. Me chasing 8:30. Mats. Wed. and Sat. FARL em carro. Vanities : Thea., 7th Ave. & Soth st Bronx Opera House ie Steet ‘Earl Carroll war’ SarTou Mats,’ Thurs, é& Sat, Pop. Prices, Mat, Clase & Lipman in MAN IN THE HOUSE” Beatantnn Monday——"“DAISY MAYME” W440S bres| ) Mats Wed | Retherine Basen, gives her ~~ “a HARRIS teice Date tse day evening at Steinway Hal WHAT PRICE GLORY at ‘Aeolian Hall ‘eutoate evening, March 22. West 42nd 8 Read The Daily Worker Everv Day aca Sepia OE REM gh ner cr Pr anetiegt