Gave Russian Production in N. Y.
Encouraged by the reception of "Beranger," the Dramatic Club now turned to one of the centuries most lertilo in the materials or art and especially the art of the theatre Russia. Leonid Andreyev's the "Life of Man" was the next production. Written by the author of "He Who Gets Slapped" it contained the germs of that play and was held by Andreyev to be the better of the two. Andreyev critics however have disagreed with him on that point, it was an ultramodern play and received ultramodern treatment. New York heard of this latest importation and wanted to see it; therefore, in the spring of 1922, the Dramatic Club took the play to that city. Since two performances were to be given--both for the benefit of the American Field Service--"Beranger" was also taken. The metropolitan reviewers were kind, especially to the Guitry play.
The next production was a sort of relapse. Nothing is more difficult to do well than Italian comedies of the eighteenth century. And in selecting Carlo Goldini's "The Liar," the Dramatic Club failed to realize that the Anglo-Saxon audiences to which it played could not easily catch the spirit of the gay Venetian. Goldini is not done now--even by the most artistically advanced of professionals; for an amateur organization he is almost impossible.
Kapek Introduced in 1924
The war created several new countries and one of them presented to the world a dramatist of recognized skill and undisputed worth. Karl Capek, Czechoslovakian dramatist, was introduced into America by his grim melodrama, "R. U. R." The public accepted it enthusiastically, but in a bewildered fashion. Then came "The Insect Comedy." And then, in the spring of 1924, the Harvard Dramatic Club presented Capek's latest play, "The Makropoulos Secret." This story of a woman who lived 300-years ran successfully in New York.
A drama of mediaeval Spain--"Pedro the King," by Miss A. Anthony Wyse of Cambridge, was the program of the following year. Coming as it did after the enormously popular "Makropoulos Secret", any play of conventional plot, or at least a plot which made no pretense o "modernistic" ideas, was bound to seem comparatively. But this tale of a tyrant whose cruelty won him immortality was anything but unexciting. Nevertheless it proved one of the less popular of Dramatic Club Productions.
Passos Stuns Audience
In the spring of 1924 there burst upon an unprepared Cambridge the most radical departure from conventional drama technique that any American playwright has written. John Dos Passos's '16 "The Moon is a Gong" is a radical play in every detail, and an extremely interesting one It was put on Broadway last year and then taken off with the announcement that it would return this fall. Of the original presentation, by the Harvard Dramatic Club, there is little to say which has not already been said: if suffices perhaps to mention the fact that "The Moon is a Gong" is the basis for Des Passos's new novel. "Manhattan Transfer" and that the two, taken together form most notable examples of expressionism in dealing with the American scene.
A year ago Nicola Evreiner's "Mr. Paelete" was produced. The Theatre Guild played it under the title of "The Chief Thing." Typically Russian, but radical and futuristic even for Russia, this play "for some a comedy, for others a drama," provoked the widest discussion. It was one of the three Dramatic Club productions to be taken over by New York managers and staged on Broadway within two seasons.
Last spring came the revival of Rida Johnson Young's comedy, "Brown of Harvard." Written in 1906, this play aimed to give an accurate picture of Harvard life of the time. The revival was dated in the same period, the old style costumes were worn, and throughout the play the actors conformed to all the set forms of the art of acting.
In addition to the two regular programs which the Club gives every year it has, in the past three seasons, staged a Miracle Play, using the Germanic Museum as a background.
Three years ago the Club produced Carlo Goldini's "The Liar". This eighteenth century Italian comedy is a difficult piece to play and a difficult piece for a modern audience to appreciate. This fall another eighteenth century Italian comedy will find its way onto the Brattle Hall boards, with "The Orange Comedy", an adaptation by Gilbert Seldes '14 from the Italian original by Carlo Gozzi, a contemporary of Goldini's. Gozzi wove around the stock characters of early slapstick comedy a story from the Arabian Nights, welding together the comic and the romantic elements. The result is something unique on the modern stage, and the particular piece which the Dramatic club has chosen has never been played in America.