Screenland (Oct 1923-Mar 1924)

Dramaland RANK CRAVEN'S little comedy, The First Year, was produced last night in the Hippodrome by Florenz Ziegfeld, with scenery by Joseph Urban, costumes by Ert6, a musical accompaniment by Puccini, ballet ensembles by Fokine, and spectacular effects by Ben Ali.Haggin and Lincoln J. Carter. And if by any chance you think that this is impossibly ridiculous, wait until Melchior Lengyel's little comedy, Sancho Panza, comes your way and go in and have a look at the way Mr. Russell Janney has produced it. Here is a broth of an Hungarian fantastic satirical comedy that M. Janney has produced as if it were the Hanlons' Fantasma. He has called in Greenwich Village Follies scenic artists, Sally costumers, a Moscow Art Theatre director and various professors of melody to concern themselves with the little manuscript and the result is that what dramatic life the little manuscript had is almost completely snuffed out. It is all very much as if a football team were drafted to play a game of Mah Jongg. Every time Lengyel's amiable but extremely fragile dialogue opens its mouth to have its agreeable little say, a dozen scene painters, dressmakers, musicians, dancing masters and the like take a running jump, grab it around the throat, and choke it into silence with grim determination. To expend all this amount of money on a play like Sancho Panza is akin to dressing up a tot of two in a Bendel gown and a couple of Cartier showcases. The vanity of producers knows no end. Very soon we shall have them putting on 60 QSays Mr. Nathan Sancho Panza is a Hungarian fantastic satirical comedy presented as if it were Hanlons' Fantasma. Candida with several hundred supers, a unit of Tiller girls, a musical accompaniment by Wolf-Ferrari, and a diamond drop curtain. The Lengyel hero is played by Otis Skinner. There are two classes of persons in the world. One believes that the world is round and the other believes that the world is flat. In the second category one finds the persons who consider Mr. Skinner a very fine actor indeed. II JO/very once in a while David Belasco does a beautiful job, and Laugh, Clown, Laugh! is one of them. It is not often that a manuscript is so intelligently handled and so shrewdly produced. Say what you will against the old boy, laugh as you will at his frequently absurd hocus-pocus and posturing, he does know how to get the last drop of dramatic juice out of a play once he takes off his Episcopalian collar, his Methodist coat and his Baptist pants and sets himself honestly to the task. The manner in which he has taken over this Italian retelling of the passion in the life of a clown and embroidered it into Anglo-Saxon theatrical life, and without sacrifice of its original integrity, is the source of great admiration. Admiration on an occasion like this runs so high, indeed, that one is brought to brush away a tear of regret that Belasco has not made of his life what he has had it in him to make of it. Here is a producer who might have become the first producer in all the English-speaking theatre had he only been a simpler man Laugh, Clown, Laugh! is shrewdly produced, minus the usual Belasco hocus-pocus. In The Next Room is a diverting mystery play you will enjoy — if you are honest with yourself. The Failures is skilful dramatic writing, but not the masterpiece certain of my . colleagues would like you to believe.