"The Melting Pot."
It is impossible not to respect the earnestness of Mr. ZANGWILL when he
treats of the persecution of his co-religionists in Russia, or their
social exclusion in America. But when he appeals to an English audience
he is addressing the converted. It is a good many years since the pogram
was a popular form of amusement in this country, and at present the Jew
is the flattered idol of English Society. It may seem surprising that
his play should have had so great a success in the States, where they
are not supposed to have a passion for hearing home truths. But then its
main theme is the glorification of America as the Melting Pot or
crucible into which are flung the wrongs and hatreds and slaveries of
the old world, to re-appear in the shape of justice and love and
freedom. This is the theme upon which _David Quixano_, a Kishineff Jew
who has lost all his family in a massacre, goes from time to time into
an orgy of lyrical raptures. And indeed the swiftness with which the
naturalised immigrant, of just any nationality, assimilates himself to
local conditions, instantly changing his heart with his change of sky,
and learning to wave his stars and stripes with the best of the
native-born, must seem miraculous to the ordinary patriot. And here we
touch the weak spot in Mr. ZANGWILL'S paean of the Melting Pot. For those
who migrate to America for the sake of its democratic freedom are the
few; and those who go there for the sake of its dollars are the many;
and into the Melting Pot--or, to use an image more apposite to
indigenous tastes, its Sausage Machine--are thrown not only the wrongs
and hatreds of unhappy races but also the dear traditions of birth and
blood and family ties and pride of country, to emerge in a uniform
pattern without a past.
For his plot, Mr. ZANGWILL relies upon a very stagy coincidence.
_Quixano_ falls in love with a young Russian girl who conducts a
Settlement Home in New York, and conquers her prejudice against his
race, only to find that she is the daughter of the very officer who
permitted the massacre at Kishineff in which _Quixano's_ family had
perished, and himself been wounded. In turn he naturally has his own
prejudices to conquer, and does so. But not till he has scared us with
the fear that he is going to be false to his theory of purification by
process of the Melting Pot.
Mr. WALKER WHITESIDE, who plays the part, was excellent in his quiet
moods, and when he was obliged to rant was no worse than other ranters.
The superb solidity of Mr. SASS as the Russian officer served as an
admirable foil to the mercurial methods of _Quixano_. Miss PHYLLIS RELPH
as the heroine mitigated the effect of her obvious sincerity by a bad
trick of showing her nice teeth. Mr. PERCEVAL CLARK, as a young American
millionaire, was pleasantly British. Humorous relief of a cosmopolitan
order was provided by the Irish brogue of Miss O'CONNOR; the broken
English of Miss GILLIAN SCAIFE; the Anglo-German of Mr. CLIFTON ALDERSON
who played very well as _Herr Pappelmeister_ (Kapellmeister to a New
York orchestra); and what I took to be the Yiddish of Miss INEZ BENSUSAN
as the aunt of the hero, a pathetic figure of an old lady with firm
views about the keeping of the Jewish Sabbath, and a pedantic habit of
celebrating with a false nose and other marks of hilarity the
anniversary of the escape of the Chosen People from a Persian pogram
twenty-five centuries ago.
It might seem from this long catalogue of humorists that frivolity was
the prevailing note of the play. But I can give assurances that this was
not so. The prevailing note was a high seriousness, culminating in the
last Act, when tedium supervened. I attribute my final depression in
part to the scene--a bird's-eye view of New York from the roof-garden of
the Settlement House. It was impossible to share _Quixano's_ spasm of
exaltation in the matter of the Melting Pot as he gazed on this very
indifferent example of scenic art.
* * * * *
"A Midsummer Night's Dream."
I am not sure that Mr. GRANVILLE BARKER'S faithful followers are being
quite kindly entreated by him. He happens to have a keen sense of humour
and for some little while he has been trying, with a very grave face, to
see how much they will swallow. This time, everybody else except the
initiated can see the bulge in his cheek where his tongue comes.
The alleged faults of the old school, which the new was to correct, were
(1) an over-elaboration of detail in the setting; (2) a realism which
challenged reality. ("Challenge," I understand, is the catch-word they
use.) Both these qualities were supposed to distract attention from the
drama itself. The answer, almost too obvious to be worth stating, is
that the grotesque and the eccentric are vastly more distracting than
the elaborate; and that, if you only sound the loud symbol loud enough
the audience has no ear left at all for the actual words. As for the
"challenging" of reality the new school would argue that, as the stage
is a thing of convention to start with--artificial light, no natural
atmosphere or perspective, no fourth wall, and so on--all the rest
should be convention too. The answer, again almost too obvious, is that,
since the audience has to bear the strain of unavoidable convention, you
should not wantonly add to their worry. And, anyhow, the human figures
on your stage (I leave out fairies and superhumans for the moment) are
bound to challenge reality by the fact that they are alive. If Mr.
BARKER wants to be consistent (and he would probably repudiate so
Philistine a suggestion) his figures should be marionettes worked by
strings; and for words--if you _must_ have words--he might himself read
the text from a corner of the top landing of his proscenium.
[Illustration: _Hermia_ (Miss Laura Cowie). "I upon this bank will rest
my head."]
And the strange thing is that no one in the world has a nicer sense of
the beauty of SHAKSPEARE'S verse than Mr. BARKER. Indeed he protests in
his preface: "They (the fairies) must be not too startling.... _They
mustn't warp your imagination--stepping too boldly between SHAKSPEARE'S
spirit and yours._" (The italics are my own comment.) He is of course
free, within limits, to choose his own convention about fairies, because
we have never seen them, though some of us say we have. Mr. CHESTERTON
naturally says they can be of any size; Mr. BARKER says they can be of
any age from little _Peaseblossom_ and his young friends to hoary
antiques with moustaches like ram's horns and beards trickling down to
their knees. And as many as like it, and are not afraid of being
poisoned, may have gilt faces that make them look like Hindoo idols with
the miraculous gift of perspiration. But he should please remember that
the play is not his own. It is, in point of fact, SHAKSPEARE'S, and I am
certain he was not properly consulted about the Orientalisation of the
fairies out of his Warwickshire woodlands. You will be told that he
_has_ been properly consulted; that he himself makes _Titania_ say that
_Oberon_ has "come from the furthest steppe of India," and that she too
had breathed "the spiced Indian air." But on the same authority Mr.
BARKER might just as well have fixed on Asia Minor or Greece as their
provenance. She charges _Oberon_ with knowing _Hippolyta_ too well, and
he accuses her of making _Theseus_ break faith with a number of ladies.
Clearly they were a travelling company and would never have confined
themselves to the costumes of any particular clime.
Anyhow, when at His Majesty's you saw _Oberon_ in sylvan dress moving
lightly through a wood that looked like a wood (and so left your mind
free to listen to him), you could believe in all the lovely things he
had to say; but when you saw Mr. BARKER'S _Oberon_ standing stark, like
a painted graven image, with yellow cheeks and red eyebrows, up against
a symbolic painted cloth, and telling you that he knows a bank where the
wild thyme blows, you know quite well that he knows nothing of the kind;
and you don't believe a word of it.
But, to leave SHAKSPEARE decently out of the question, I liked the gold
dresses of the fairies enormously, so long as _Puck_--a sort of adult
Struwel-Puck that got badly on my nerves--was not there, destroying
every colour scheme with his shrieking scarlet suit, which went with
nothing except a few vermilion eyebrows. I liked too the grace of their
simple chain-dances on the green mound (English dances, you will note,
and English tunes--not Indian). But in the last scene, where they
interlace among the staring columns, their movements lacked space.
Indeed that was the trouble all through; that, and the pitiless light
that poured point-blank upon the stage from the 12.6 muzzles protruding
from the bulwarks of the dress-circle. There was no distance, no
suggestion of the spirit-world, no sense of mystery (except in regard to
Mr. BARKER'S intentions).
The best scene was the haunt of _Titania_, with its background of
Liberty curtains very cleverly disposed. As drapery they were excellent,
but as symbols of a forest I found them a little arbitrary. I do not
mind a forest being indicated, if you are short of foliage, by a couple
of trees (in tubs, if you like) or even a single tree; but somehow--and
the fault is probably mine--the spectacle of hanging drapery does not
immediately suggest to me the idea of birds' nests. I am afraid I should
be just as stupid if Mr. BARKER gave me the same convention the other
way round, and showed an interior with foliage to indicate
window-curtains.
The play itself, with its rather foolish figures from the Court and the
easy buffoonery of its peasants, does not offer great chances of acting;
and Miss LAURA COWIE was the only one in the cast who added to her
reputation. Her _Hermia_ was a delightful performance full of charm and
piquancy and real intelligence. Miss LILLAH MCCARTHY sacrificed
something of her personality to the exigences of a flaxen chevelure. Mr.
HOLLOWAY'S _Theseus_ was wanting in kingliness, and his hunting scene
was perhaps the worst thing in the play. He was not greatly helped by
his _Hippolyta_, for Miss EVELYN HOPE never began to look like a leader
of Amazons. Miss CHRISTINE SILVER'S _Titania_ had a certain domestic
sweetness, but even a queen of fairies might be a little more queenly.
Mr. DENNIS NEILSON-TERRY as _Oberon_ was a curiously effeminate figure
for those who recalled the manly bearing of his mother in the same part.
Of the two bemused Athenian lovers, Mr. SWINLEY, as _Lysander_, bore
himself as bravely as could be expected.
Mr. NIGEL PLAYFAIR had, of course, no difficulty with the part of
_Bottom_, and Mr. ARTHUR WHITBY'S _Quince_ and Mr. QUARTERMAINE'S
_Flute_ were both excellent. It is to the credit of the whole troupe of
rustic players that nobody tried to force the fun.
Apart from a slight tendency to hurry, a trick that, except in swift
dialogue or passionate speech, gives the effect of something learnt by
heart and not spontaneous, the delivery of the lines--and some of
SHAKSPEARE'S most exquisite are here--was done soundly.
Finally, no one who wants to keep level with the table-talk of the day
should miss this interesting and intriguing production, especially if he
hasn't been to _Parsifal_.