Bryn Mawr College - Bryn Mawr Yearbook (Bryn Mawr, PA)

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until the stage becomes overcrowded, while the showy red color scheme, at first pic- turesque, becomes tiresome, and the horse-play obtrusive. The romantic element plays a large part in the tragedy, the love stories begin- ning almost immediately and ending in complications, add many charming scenes and lighten the rather heavy atmosphere. The lyrics throughout were bad, the choruses rarely knew their songs, and when they did the words were hardly worth listening to. Up to the climax the heroine manages to overcome the curse of being a light blue class, but afterward her power of resisting good fails her and she succumbs to her destiny. The play leaves one with an entirely satisfied feeling, however, after the charming and unexpected scene of pure comedy, when the heroine overcomes Na- ture and relapses into that delightful and original hoop rolling chorus. Margaret Ballou Dramatic Errors Our author, ' we regret to state, Does things that are not fair: He brings in people who are not At all essential to the plot — And doesn ' t seem to care! D. T. and this year ' s Freshman class Have no large function here, The Juniors are a blunder, too, There ' s not a thing that they can do To make the action clear. Nelson adds color to the scene And so we let him pass, But those poor lab girls who must stay In Dalton all the livelong day We might delete en masse. We wish the number on the stage Were not so very vast, For we should find it simpler far, Since only very few can star, To have a smaller cast. Doris Pitkin 12

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The Light That Failed (A CRITICISM) The comi-tragedy of The Light That Failed, produced under the auspices of 1918, is an interesting study of inheritance and an excellent example of the old time moral- ity play; the only immoral element, Dr. Potter, we shall leave for a red class to criticize. It would have been easier for the critic if the author had omitted the fourth act, which is really little more than an epilogue, the only justification for which is the publicity given to the rather charming old English May Day scene. The heroine is engaged in a struggle against the curse of being a light blue class throughout the play, while the conflicting emotions for ' 19 and ' 18 afford an inter- esting bit of character drawing. The heroine is possessed of many good qualities, of persistence, energy, and is above all a good sport, but she has one great flaw which is the cause of her undoing — an over-developed sense of humor. This sense of humor is apparently a family trait and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the sins of the parents are visited upon the children. Just as she is about to gain her objective, her sense of humor gets the better of her and frustrates her efforts. And yet it was the sense of humor which made her not care a damn for the opposing forces of man, nature and the elements during that perilous first act. The three seemed bent on her undoing, Hel circumventing the carefree young girl by the intricacies of college eti- quette, the office by tying her down with red tape and the drives by sapping the vitality of the growing girl. The outstanding characters in the first act were well cast and managed to keep the attention of the audience centered upon them, they were all picturesque characters and added spice to the play. They were set in splendid relief to the naive and in- genuous voung heroine, who, by her delightful disregard of all convention made many a dramatic moment, and kept the audience in a state of suspense. Good as the char- acter studies were in the first act the play occasionally lapsed into mere horse-play which reached its height in a hand-to-hand fight in a public street. This fight, although bad from a purely dramatic viewpoint, gave the theatre a tremendous amount of pub- licity, described as it was all over the country. A good deal of straight humor was added by the comedian. C. M. K. A., who, by his quaint drolleries and acrobatic stunts, called forth many a hearty laugh from the audience. One of the chief faults with the structure of the play is that the climax comes in the middle of the first act when the heroine was voted fresh, after that great event with its wonderful staging and truly tragic moments, the action falls steadily, reaching a rather tragic denouement when the heroine is forced to call in Billy Sunday to save her soul and lead her back to the trail. Most of the conspicuous characters leave at the end of the first act, and altogether too many new characters are introduced, 11

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