The significance of Mr. Henry Miller's performance of the "Faith Healer," to be given next Monday, seems to have partly escaped public attention. Mr. Miller's success in "The Great Divide" gave him a reputation which, though based principally on that one play, surely entitles him to the distinction of appearing in Sanders Theatre. Moreover, he comes to Cambridge on very generous conditions, besides interrupting his run in New York for the occasion. We believe that this will be the first professional performance in Sanders Theatre of a modern English play.
Mr. Moody, the author of the "Faith Healer," is one of the younger American dramatists, the product of Harvard's training in English literature and dramatic art. Regarding his work we quote briefly from an article by Professor Baker which appeared recently in the Graduates' Magazine: "In both plays ('The Great Divide' and the 'Faith Healer') we face drama not merely entertaining or amusing, but stimulative of thought about certain phases of American life--stimulative because conceived in thought and developed by close thinking. Again, too, we face the unconventional, for in 'The Great Divide' Mr. Moody handles situations from which our stage even a decade ago would have shrunk in timid trembling, and in the 'Faith Healer' he enters the field of religious belief, a subject, till within something like a decade, thoroughly taboo for our drama.
. . . . This conflict between the elemental and impulsive and the sophisticated and acquired in our natures is at the centre of both plays. His is the power to present striking and suggestive ideas by dramatic situations, with a characterization delicate or vigorous as he pleases, in a phrasing of a literary quality unusual on our stage. Already Mr. Moody is in the forefront of our dramatists. If he at all fulfills his promise, the will be one of those who will vindicate the rights of our nascent drama to be placed side by side with the Continental so far as thoughtful yet genuinely dramatic consideration of subtle problems of modern life is considered."
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