Once upon a time I called Hermann Sudermann the Klingsor of the German
stage, meaning thereby that he was a master of black magic. Of course,
like most comparisons, this was a far-fetched one. Yet Sudermann is a
master of theatrical machinery. With a pressure of his little finger
he can set the wheels whirring and make their noise attractive if not
precisely significant. This is the case with his latest offering, Der
gute Ruf (Good Reputation), which captured Berlin at the Deutsches
Schauspielhaus on the Friedrichstrasse. The play, in four acts, is a
variation on its author's early theme, Honour. It is also a variant of
his Joy of Life (Es lebe das Leben), translated by Edith Wharton, but
with the difference that the motive of Honour was more malleable for
the purpose of dramatic treatment, and also truer to life, while in
Reputation (as I suppose it will be called when translated) the thesis
is too incredible for belief; hence the magician, wily as he is,
scrambles about aimlessly in the last two acts, sparring for wind, and
seemingly anxious to escape from a blind alley of situations. That he
does it so well is a tribute to his technical prowess.
He knows how to write a play. This play would succeed in foreign
countries where the Hauptmann and Schnitzler plays would fall down.
The reason is because of the strong theatrical quality of the piece,
and the grateful role for the heroine, a role that might have been
written in Paris; indeed, the entire work, despite its local flavour,
recalls the modern Parisian theatre of Bernstein & Co., because of its
cynical satire, its mysterious intrigue, its doors and bells, its
numerous exits and entrances.
A woman, rather a superwoman, the Baroness von Tanna, sacrifices her
name--not of the best because she flirts--to save the good, nay,
spotless reputation of her dearest friend, a millionaire's wife--who,
in a "mad moment" (Aha!) becomes the beloved of a certain fascinating
Max, a young and handsome ne'er-do-well. To add to the piquancy of the
situation, the baroness, a beautiful woman, and not, like her friend,
the mother of children, is entangled in the same net; she, too, adores
Max the heart crusher, though she will not cross the Rubicon for his
silly sake. The usual "triangle" becomes star-shaped, for a new
feminine presence appears, a girl who is matched to marry the fatal
Max. That makes five live wires; two husbands, two wives, a naive
virgin, with Max as inaccessible as a star. But after a capital
exposition, Sudermann gets us in a terrible state of mind by making
the lady with the good reputation go off in a hysterical crisis, and
almost confess to her stiff, severe husband--who is a maniac on the
subject of his house being above suspicion. The charming, reckless
baroness intervenes at the crucial point, becomes a lightning-rod that
draws the electric current, and pretends to be the real culprit. Her
husband, a sinister baron and ex-lieutenant in the Hussars, is
present. A duel with Max is the result. In the last act, after she has
been subjected to all kinds of ignominy, Baroness Dorrit von Tanna,
without confessing, is socially rehabilitated. Skim-milk in this
instance has passed for cream, the prudish millionaire's wife, her
honour saved for the world at large, is now revealed as a hypocrite to
her astounded and snobbish husband. The curtain falls on a maze of
improbabilities, with the baroness in the centre.
For people who don't take their theatre seriously, _i. e._, neither as
a fencing ground for propagandists nor for puling poets, this new
Sudermann piece will please. It has triumphed in Berlin and Munich.
Its people are portraits taken from fashionable West End Berlin, while
the dialogue, witty, incisive, and also characteristic, is one of the
consolations of a play that does not for a moment produce any
illusion. There are plenty of striking episodes, but logic is lacking,
not only the logic of life, but the logic of the theatre. No living
playwright knows better how to arouse suspense than Sudermann, and he
can't make us believe in his false theme, consequently his motivation
in the last two acts is false and disappointing. But there is the old
Sudermann pyrotechnical virtuosity, the fireworks dazzle with their
brilliancy, and you think of Paris, and also that some drama may be
divorced from life and literature and yet be interesting. Insincere as
is the denouement, the note of insincerity was absent in the acting of
the cast. The honours were easily borne away by a pretty Viennese
actress from the Volks Theatre there, Elsa Galafres by name, whose
methods are Gallic, whose personality is charming. Critical Berlin has
taken her to itself, and her theatrical fortune is made. It may be
confessed that her part, despite its artificiality, is one that any
actress in the world would jump at. Sudermann is a conjurer. His
puppets are all agreeable, and, in one instance, vital: the father of
the baroness, a financier, who could be easily turned into a "heavy"
conventional father, but, as played by Hermann Nissen, is a positively
original characterisation. Max the butterfly (Ernst Dumcke) was wholly
admirable. I shall be very much surprised if Der gute Ruf does not
soon appear on the stage of other lands. Its picture of manners, its
mundane environment, its epigrams and dramatic bravoura will make it
welcome everywhere. Sudermann is still Klingsor, the evoker of
artificial figures, not the poet who creates living men and women.