TOW that summer is here the opera

NOW

is over, the theatre is engaged in a delirium of experimental productions, and in the picture galleries the old masters which had been kept in the cellar all winter have been taken out to adorn the grey velvet in a forlorn hope that some millionaire in town for the day on business may, in seeking a cool spot, see them and purchase one or two that have been on hand for a good many years. The New Yorker, along with most of the journalistic, editorial, and theatrical population, has, like Cato, retired to rustic surroundings from which he emerges only when he finds the lettuces, the nasturtiums, and the endless expanse of open sea a poor substitute for roof gardens adorned with dusty palms and theatres draped in autumn leaves made of oilcloth. There are in the way of summer resorts much worse places than New York. Already the annual migration of diamond bedecked South Americans (who seem to regard Manhattan as a delirious, international Coney Island) has begun to swamp the hotels. Likewise the buyers from all parts of the country, and the tourists who share with them the responsibility for supporting the entertainments staged by Florenz Ziegfeld, Irving Berlin, George White, Charles B. Dillingham, the Messrs. Shubert, and others. The city is changed. It is more wild and less gay than in winter.

In the meanwhile, one or two serious

productions have been put forth in the hope of capturing the rear guard of the "serious" audience. In their bandbox theatre in Fifty Second Street the Stagers, who did not pick so well in their initial production of E. Temple Thurston's "The Blue Peter", joined the fashion for revivals and selected a play by Henrik Ibsen. Their choice was "Rosmersholm", a play which in essence has always seemed to us a little idiotic; yet for this very reason it serves as a supreme example of Ibsen's immense power and genius for the theatre. If one related the plot simply, he would very likely be greeted with guffaws. Yet Ibsen, with the weird, unearthly, hypnotic power which he is so able to evoke, succeeds in reaching out and taking possession of his audience in such a way that one succumbs with a passionate interest that is, strange to say, not emotional but intellectual. It is less a drama of human creatures than one of ideas and ideals. In "The Wild Duck", which was written just before "Rosmersholm" (and may be viewed a half dozen blocks away), one feels that the author was torn between two inclinations; it marks in a sense the transition of Ibsen from one manner to another. "Rosmersholm" represents the complete break. In "The Wild Duck", it was the death of an ideal that tortured us far more than the death of Hedwig, which divided or rather shared with the former situation the dramatic tug

of the play. In "Rosmersholm" it is the ideas, without much question, to which the audience responds. Toward the characters Rebecca West, Rosmer, Dr. Kroll, and the others - one entertains but a cold, aloof impartiality. It is a matter of no deep concern that Rebecca and Rosmer leap into the mill stream and so perish. It is what perished with them and what created their destruction that is of interest. It is magic that a playwright could arouse in so intellectual a study an interest equal to that of the most heart rending emotional melodrama.

The cast and the directing of the Stagers' production gives full scope to the magic. We are inclined to award the first prize to the director, Edward Goodman, for the way in which he has created, by tempo and the movement of his actors, a certain breathless expectation of the final tragedy. The deaths of Rosmer and Rebecca are, to be sure, forecast superbly by Ibsen, but all that might easily have been lost, as such things are frequently lost, in the hands of a clumsy director and an incompetent cast. (The more we see of the theatre, the more we realize that any play is utterly at the mercy of the actors and the director.) The cast itself was admirably chosen, so admirably that it is difficult to say that one was any better or any worse than another. Margaret Wycherly was Rebecca; Warren Williams played Rosmer; Carl Anthony (hitherto unknown to us) was exactly right as Doctor Kroll; J. M. Kerrigan played the fantastic Ulric Brendel; Arthur Hughes, Mortensgaard; and Josephine Hull, Madame Helseth. The production is admirable. We wish all power to these new competitors in a theatrical world which too often moves in a miasma of blunders and stupidity.

One other play, "The Poor Nut",

which comes, like "The Show-Off" and "Is Zat So?", directly out of the theatre itself by way of the talented Nugent family, proved to be excellent entertainment.

The month also brought the triumphant return of the Marquise de la Falaise de la Coudray (none other than our clever old friend Gloria Swanson) in an elaborate and magnificently staged motion picture adaptation of "Madame Sans-Gêne". In a turmoil of dinners, teas, and receptions (in which the Marquis sometimes came very near to being mislaid) the picture finally had a grand opening by invitation at five dollars a ticket at the Rivoli. The police reserves of two stations were called out to keep back a mob which blocked the traffic in Broadway and falsely identified each person who stepped from a taxicab. Bearded judges were greeted with cries of "There goes Charlie Chaplin!" and dowagers in tiaras were hailed with cries of "Mae Murray! — Our Mae!" The event was in character social, journalistic, theatrical, "moviesque", and other things, so that the confusion attained a high pitch. It was, as the old saying goes, a brilliant audience.

When at last the picture flickered upon the screen we found that the good old story was rather swamped amid state balls, mob scenes, and tea parties on the lawn at Compiègne. Also it was interrupted rather too frequently with such subtitles as, "This room was the one in which Napoleon always received his barber", so that at times it resembled one of those nature education films. It was a perfect orgy for an interior decorator. None the less we enjoyed it immensely, having a sad twist in the direction of the academic. It was rather like visiting the Metropolitan Museum. Miss Swanson ex

The great novelist's two shorter plays · interesting study.

"Wild Birds" by Dan Totheroh (Doubleday, Page). This prize play from California has poetry in it and reads rather better than it played.

"Glamour" by Stark Young (Scribner). More of this remote critic's speculative but provocative essays.

"They Knew What They Wanted" by Sidney Howard (Doubleday, Page). The year's Pulitzer Prize play and well worthy of the prize.

"Rebel Smith" by Spencer Brodney (Siebel). A play of Australian life involving industrial as well as amatory problems.

"Dramatic Illustrations of Passages from the Second Part of 'The Pilgrim's Progress"" by Mrs. George MacDonald (Oxford). Seven scenes from the classic, as played by the MacDonald family between 1877 and 1887.

"The Little Father of the Wilderness" by Austin Strong and Lloyd Osbourne "The Pathfinder" by Herman Ould "Joan the Maid" by Herman Ould "The Discovery" by Herman Ould Ann's Little Affair" by Harry Osborne "The Imaginary Invalid" by Molière, translated by Barrett H. Clark (French). One act and longer plays suitable for amateurs, issued in compact, inexpensive editions.

erted the usual charm for which all else must be excused her; but she was, in the midst of a French cast, not very French, and at times we feared that she was on the verge of giving Napoleon a performance of her admirable imitation of Charlie Chaplin. Eleven years ago in a small town in the middle west we saw a movie of "Madame Sans-Gêne" in which Réjane played the title rôle. She was then an old woman and the sets were of cardboard. The gardens of Fontainebleau were painted on a

backdrop and the furniture must have come out of a second hand shop on the Boulevard Raspail; but as drama it was far better stuff than New York paid five dollars a seat to witness at the Rivoli.

The Revolutionary scenes were excellently handled in Miss Swanson's picture, but they carried no more menace than the mob outside the theatre which waited in the street for three hours until the gilded doors disgorged their procession of Bendel

clothes, dyed hair, lip sticks, and other Hollywood equipment. And the court which surrounded Marie-Louise in her unhappy lifetime was a cold blooded affair in comparison to the mob of admirers which escorted Miss Swanson breathlessly to the stage at the moment of her "personal appearance".

It is no intention of ours that these remarks should be interpreted as disparaging Miss Swanson. She understands her business perfectly. She is one of the few movie stars who carry their laurels well. She has a great flair for clothes. Indeed, she is altogether admirable. It is the rest of the human race (or the ninety nine per cent of it represented by the mob outside the door and by most of the mob inside) which discourages us. The movie producers, we fear, can never do anything free from hokum so long as they must depend on this mob for the quarters and half dollars that are the red corpuscles of the industry. Certainly life in America must be pretty terrible more terrible than even Sinclair Lewis and "The Nation" would have us believe - if the need for escape is as violent as this spectacle seemed to indicate.

Two books came our way during the past month which gave us unusual pleasure. One was a gem called "Se-, rena Blandish, or The Difficulty of Getting Married", ascribed to A Lady of Quality, and the other was "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf. Serena is a priceless picture of the kind of lady who has existed since the beginning of time and has a great number of sisters here among us in America. The book is laid in London and the author, whoever she may be, has every right to be described as A Lady of Quality. It is our wager that she is a lady by birth, an extremely intelligent woman, and

one to whom life offers little more in experience. It is, we might say, the only completely sophisticated book we have ever read. By its side the works of Mr. Arlen might serve as textbooks for a Sunday School class. It is related as a fable. It is well written with an admirable restraint, and it possesses a civilized humor of the sort we have seldom encountered.

As to "Mrs. Dalloway", we hesitate to recommend it carelessly, believing as we do that in order to appreciate it fully one should attend a school of some sort established to educate readers for the works of this astonishingly clever writer. In period of time the book covers, in the fashion of Mr. Joyce, the events of one day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, but the difference in the methods of Mr. Joyce and Mrs. Woolf is enormous. "Mrs. Dalloway" is a small, beautifully cut emerald and "Ulysses" is a large mass of uncut amethyst crystals. The author is a literary descendant from Henry James, twin brother in a fashion to Marcel Proust, another descendant of the Old Pretender. But here again there is a difference; Mrs. Woolf is as economical as Proust is prodigal. Her books are the distillations of a cold and brilliant intellect, while those included in "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu" are the diffuse and patterned records of a sensuous and sensitive nature.

Mrs. Woolf has developed a method of her own which, beginning vaguely with "The Voyage Out", runs through a series of novels and culminates in the crystal perfection of "Mrs. Dalloway". Much credit is due "The Dial" for the work it has done in this country in her behalf. "Mrs. Dalloway" is not

will be not unlike "Mrs. Dalloway", and that one might as well begin at once to understand the changes. There is an interesting pamphlet available which sets forth the credo of Mrs. Woolf. It is called "Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown" and is the spark which set a fine controversy under way in London.

Not long ago we read in the "World" an article by Mr. Mencken on the regional sources of material which has come to him in the course of his editorial duties. It was a stormy article, and one which looked very bright but did not wash so well a thing that is true of many yards of the calico printed in Baltimore. Barring the fact that there is undoubtedly a vast amount of material which by virtue of Mr. Mencken's own loudly announced tastes is not likely even to be sent him for consideration, he was not quite fair nor very convincing. He had his usual fling in the course of the article at the barrenness of New England. What leads us into this discussion is the death, not many days afterward, of Amy Lowell, a product of this same "barren ground". Mr. Mencken, it has been said, is a critic. In this we disagree, believing him to be far more a politician (baffled perhaps in his first

youth by a leaning toward bad poetry); but that is beside the question. Granting him the title of "critic", we remain convinced that in the years to come, when Mr. Mencken is where it is no longer possible to be bumptious, it is Miss Lowell who will be remembered for her critical contributions and Mr. Mencken as a clever journalist known once as the Sage of Baltimore. Aside from her contributions to American poetry and the encouragement which extended to other and younger poets, the death of Miss Lowell is a serious loss. We have in America far too many journalists and far too few critics.

In writing this we wish to say that we do not come from New England. We are from the middle west, which the Sage of Baltimore seems on the eve of abandoning to oblivion in behalf of a south which stands girlishly on the threshold of a career rosy with a promise as brilliant as that of the Chicago school. (God rest its soul!) Chicago has been betrayed by Mr. Mencken; it is, he tells us, no longer the literary centre of America. The centre is slipping rapidly in the direction of Atlanta, home of the Ku Klux Klan.

LOUIS BROMFIELD