Variety (Sep 1928)

An Opinion by the Eminent English Critic and Dramatist IN THE NEW YORK MORNING "WORLD" OF SEPT. 14, 1928, ON "NIGHT HOSTESS" Mr. Dunning Does It Again This, ladies and gentlemen. Is a play. Mr. bynnlns has now established himself as a veracious chronicler of some of the manners, of our time. "Broadway" might have beeii a fluke, but "Night Hostess" pVoves that it was ndt. Our author understands his busi- ness and has eyes in his liead. He can ob- serve. I call the attention of learned profes- sors to Mr. Punning. I Invite them to believe that .he is as wortliy of their study as are the works of Restoration i^ramatists. They will not, of course, believe me,' for I have ; noticed that doctor-s of literature, and espe- cially of dramatic literature, are reluctant to believe in the merits of an author until all , general intqrest in him has ceased. A dead ass is more in the eyes' of arinotators and commentators and dabblers in erudition than a live lion. When Mr. Dunning lias been long en- tombed, monographs on Ills work AVill,appear In the press, signed by fecntlemcn in pos- session of high degrees, and posterity will be. told that he was t6 the nlneteon-twentles in New York what Wycherley . and Congreve and Beaumont and Fletcher and Farquhiar and Massinger were to their period in 13ng- land. Let me not be indefinite about this. Mr. Dunning Is entitled to take his place In the ranks of those authors who specialize in pictures of Uieir contemporaries. Faithful- ly he puts down what he .sees of that part of life to which he has devoted his attention. It Is not an Important part of life, nor does he say that it is, but it is as significant of . our life as were the coffee-houses of Con- greve's time. Mr. Dunning, indeed,. works strictly in the tradition of his class. The opening of "Night Hostess" can be related to the opening of "The Way of the World." Mr. Dunning differs from other contempo* rary'authors who attempt to repeat the per- formance of the Restoration dramatists: he does not disgust his audience with humanity. In many of the plays that are currently praised we find an . as.sombly of persons in whom there appears not to be .a single decent instinct. A volume of plays, by the French dramatist Mr. H. R. Lenormahd has lately tteeh published in- an itnglish translation. They are written with some distinction and a genuine sense of character, and they con- tain opinions that are occasionally arrest- ing-. But Mr. Lenormand, who is too often mawkishly morbid, and is afflicted with the notion, which afflicts Mr. Eugene" O'Neill, that disease in itself is dramatically inter- • esting, leaves, his readers and his audience cynically dissatisfied with all existence, At the end of "Le Mangeur de Reves" or "L'Homme et ses Fantomes" we have but one-desire:-that-aU^these vile-or. depressing. people shall quickly die. Not one just man or woman Is to be found In the entire collec- tion. We come a\vay from a Lenormand play .' disgusted, unwilling to believe that there is any point In continuing what appears to be an Irredeemable blunder. An author,,In short, can make us dissatisfied with life in two ways: by causing us to feel.that It had far better cease than continue, or by. causing us to believe that while It Is often a messy By Philip Dunning business, yet there i-emains somewhere in the core of it a divine spark that nivay be fanned into flames of glory, . Mr. Dunning takes us into a little casino and introduces us to a variety of people, many of whom ought never to have been al- lowed out of their sewers. Here are. gamblers and drunkards and gay girls whose business Is to decov what they elegantly call "suckers" into the casino and .he bar. The place is full-of noise and that .singular substitute for : pleasure, jazz music. One Buddy-Miles, an attractive but nearly Imbecile young woman, is the most popular of the hostesses,, who might better be called harpi.es. IJcr. good nature, her vivacity and her fundamental decency compci the habi- tues of the little casino to like her, and when she perches herself on top of a piano and sings "Everybody's Buddy." which was com- posed for her by young Rags Conway, the piano-puncher, who is at- present on, the Coast, the pleasure, hunters gather round her and for a few moments find pleasure. The -owner of the casino is an elderly Jew- ish gentleman called Ben Fischer, a kindly iihd honest man, who, haS had to leave the piace in the control of his manager, Chris Miller, because he has been In hospital with rheumatism- Chris is a rat It ever there was one, "and he has been running the little casino on lines that result In lo^s to Ben and disaster to its patrons. One of them, Frank Warden, after .vinning a large , sum of money, is decoyed Into a neighboring chop suey by one of the hostesses, Julia, who is living apart from her husband, a policeman, and living together with Chris. Wardell Is beaten up In the chop suey so brutally that . he dies in hospital. It Is to change the character of his casino and conduct a crooked business on straight lines that Ben Fischer recalls young Rags - Conway from the Coast. He arrives in time for the murder of Wardell and the discovery that his girl. Buddy, is being lured to Chi- cago by Chris Miller with the promise of a part in a new musical comedy. This second discovery is also made by Julia, who, in a State of drunken rage, threatens to expose Miller, and Is strangled by him for her pains. The rest of the play swiftly and ingeniously deals with the detection of the crime. This bald summary cannot possibly indi- cate the quality of Mr. Dunning's play, but neither could a bald summary of "Hamlet" Indicate the <iuality of Shakespeare's. What my readers must believe Is that Mr. Dunning has brought into his play a quality of life that, is extraordinarily vivid and Imagin- 'f' atively veraciou.s. He has made a brilliant design out of old stuff. I have never been in a casino of this sort in my life, nor would ..anything in the world _tempt_me_tojgo j^^^^^ that 1 have any wish to meet Mr. Dunning, however, does not present us only with un- presenta;blo people. He kce.ps his balance There are villains in life, and too many* biit there are heroes al.so, and they are not so Infrequent as we might in our more cynical moments suppose. What I fear in Mr. Dunning, is that his sense of life is greater than his sense of • art. He is not so deft In displaying his ma- terial as he is in choosing it. At-the end of this piece his artlessness becomes painfully apparent. The body of Julia, has been found —the craftnianship of the play at this point . is magnificent—a,nd we face a scene that is intensely poignant. The jazz music Is blar- ing and the gamblers in the adjoining room are clawing at their chips, and the whole dismal galumphry of gayety is going on when the dead girl is carried into the bar by her husband. The curtain ought to de- scend almost immediately attcr that point is reached. Bon's speech, "I'm through with this buslne.ss," ought to.end the play. ■ But Mr, Dunning allows his sense of life' to turn Into a sense of Ui^^trical life, and he abandons all artistry^ The note of tli« play Is suddenly changed, And six . or seven .staggeringly banal sentences spolten by Ben and Buddy and Rags and a girl :who was fond of Ben reduce the play from the status of a tragic-comedy to that of a piece of pure slop, "the fault, fortunately, can easily be corrected. Even with this fault "Night Host- ess" is a brilliant play. It will, I think, be a great success in London. It Is finely produced and finely acted. Mr. Winchcir Smith has an eye for effective de- tail that Is almost uncanny. The first an- nouncement to the audience that the crime has been discovered Is made In a way that is pure drama, A di.stracted girl sways blind- ly across the stage, not uttering a wordj fumbles impotently at a door and then runs up some stairs. That is what I call .produc- tion. The entire cast acts so well that I have . difllculty In selecting names for mention. A small part was performed by Mr. Porter Hall with, so much distinction that every word he said was significant, yet the part was not tbrown out of perspective. That is what I call acting. Mi.ss Ruth Lyons, Miss (Jail Do. H.T,rt, Mr. Maurice Freeman, Mr. Charles Lait, Mr. John L. Kearney and Mr. .ifenry Lawrence (in a nicely played tiny part) all earned their salaries and a bit more. I think it was Miss Louise Kirtland who took the part of the girl who loves Ben Fischer. If it was, then Miss Kirtland too is entitled to take her salary with a clear con- science. The Chris Miller of Mr. Avercll llair- ris was a remarkably \*ell-etGliGd character. Mr. Harris never m.'ule a mistake in por- traying the .shifty rat, nor did he for a sec- ond overdo the man's spurious good fcllow- , ship . one. That .kind of jollity bores me-,stiff, and I would sooner seek for my entertainment in a morgue than in a cabaret or a night club: the'corpses in the former are probably more amusing than the galvanized corpses in the latter. But although I have never been in one of these places I.am imaginatiyoly, con- vinced that, this is a true picture of one of them, and I am satisfied that the people pre- sented to me by Mr, Dunning are real peo- ple, even If. many of them are not pcoplo inSo w~lU;a^c "Tn y s^^ Foster, whose acting of Rags Conway was the Jolliest and most attractive performance of its kind that I have seen for many months. What luck for me in my first week ii? New York to .see so ^Ino a play so well produced and .so .splendidly. acted., The. whole of this company must go to London. I wairn Mr. Foster, however, that If ho goes he will proio- ably not be allowed to come back to Now York. Produced by JOHN GOLDEN Staged by WINCHELL SMITH At Martin Beck Theatre, New York, Currently