Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/154



OMETHING akin to divine assurance was restored to our theatre when was produced by the Theatre Guild. The certainty we had so long lacked that the theatre could give us anything hard and clear, swift and certain in its movement, had been insufficiently challenged in the last year or two; among Americans Mr O'Neill alone made it advisable to wait and see. We understand fully that is neither the best example of Georg Kaiser's work nor an exceptional example of expressionism on the stage. It is easy to quarrel with the occasional wearing thin of the material out of which the play is made. But one cannot question the profound conviction that this play is a way of revelation for the cluttered and floundering theatre of our time.

The police court reporters who seem always to displace the dramatic critics when a serious play is produced in New York found this play either dull or mad. The conclusion that it is exceptionally clear and thrilling is obvious, and justified. In seven scenes one follows a day in the life of a bank clerk from the moment when he is misled into believing a client to be an adventuress, steals for her, and discovers his error, to the moment in the Salvation Army shelter when, having failed to find the pinnacle of life which his crime has made imperative for him, he commits suicide. At the very beginning he meets the simulacrum of death and rejects the offered way to release; he returns "from the grave" to his home; he tries the excitement of crowds at a race-course and the surexcitation of drink and lust at a cabaret. From the penitent's bench he casts his stolen money away, since he has found no game great enough, no stake high enough for him to risk it; and he is betrayed.

The motions of the man's spirit are translated into visible dramatic action. Each scene is the outline of a drama, each phrase is the circumference of an emotion. Nothing is done, nothing is spoken, except the essential. The variety of the scenes is amazing. In the snow-covered field the cashier speaks with imagined presences, then with his own soul, finally with death; in his home all the characters speak small phrases which are actually the essences