It was an interesting experiment on the part of the Stage Society to
give a translation of "La Nouvelle Idole," one of those pieces by which
M. François de Curel has reached that very actual section of the French
public which is interested in ideas. "The New Idol" is a modern play of
the most characteristically modern type; its subject-matter is largely
medical, it deals with the treatment of cancer; we are shown a doctor's
laboratory, with a horrible elongated diagram of the inside of the human
body; a young girl's lungs are sounded in the doctor's drawing-room;
nearly every, character talks science and very little but science. When
they cease talking science, which they talk well, with earnestness and
with knowledge, and try to talk love or intrigue, they talk badly, as if
they were talking of things which they knew nothing about. Now,
personally, this kind of talk does not interest me; it makes me feel
uncomfortable. But I am ready to admit that it is justified if I find
that the dramatic movement of the play requires it, that it is itself an
essential part of the action. In "The New Idol" I think this is partly
the case. The other medical play which has lately been disturbing Paris,
"Les Avariés," does not seem to me to fulfil this condition at any
moment: it is a pamphlet from beginning to end, it is not a satisfactory
pamphlet, and it has no other excuse for existence. But M. de Curel has
woven his problem into at least a semblance of action; the play is not a
mere discussion of irresistible physical laws; the will enters into the
problem, and will fights against will, and against not quite
irresistible physical laws. The suggestion of love interests, which come
to nothing, and have no real bearing on the main situation, seems to me
a mistake; it complicates things, things which must appear to us so very
real if we are to accept them at all, with rather a theatrical kind of
complication. M. de Curel is more a thinker than a dramatist, as he has
shown lately in the very original, interesting, impossible "Fille
Sauvage." He grapples with serious matters seriously, and he argues
well, with a closely woven structure of arguments; some of them bringing
a kind of hard and naked poetry out of mere closeness of thinking and
closeness of seeing. In "The New Idol" there is some dialogue, real
dialogue, natural give-and-take, about the fear of death and the horror
of indestructibility (a variation on one of the finest of Coventry
Patmore's odes) which seemed to me admirable: it held the audience
because it was direct speech, expressing a universal human feeling in
the light of a vivid individual crisis. But such writing as this was
rare; for the most part it was the problem itself which insisted on
occupying our attention, or, distinct from this, the too theatrical
characters.