Washington Seminary - Facts and Fancies Yearbook (Atlanta, GA)

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and live for just a few years until he shall come of age and perhaps make something of his thwarted youth. His request is granted. He lives, only to fall in love with a woman of questionable morals and to die again, disillusioned and reconciled to his fate. The settings of this play are exquisite in every detail. Mrs. Scott does not make a practice of reviewing musical plays but because of the popularity of the song Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, she mentioned Roberta. The music is by Jerome Kern and the play from a novel by Alice Duer Miller. The play is really a gown-maker's holi- day. Men In Wlvifr, by Sidney Kingsley, is without doubt one of the finest plays of the season. It is so far the only play to present actually on the stage an operat- ing room complete in every detail. It deals with the heroism and self-sacrifice of members of the- medical profession and has for its theme the selfishness of a rich girl who insists that her fiance, a young interne, be at her beck and call at every moment, despite his duties at the hospital. The topic is sordid but well done. Then come plays having elements of propaganda in them. First among these is They Shall Nof Die, the story of the Scottsboro case. The people of the north seem to regard it more as a problem play of justice than as a racial problem. It is harrowing, but magnificently done. Peafr' on Earth is a production of a new theater group called the Theatre Union, who say they are establishing a theatre for the working class. The Union is located at present in Eva LeGalliene's old theatre. Their first play deals with ship-loaders who, on discovering soap boxes full of ammunition in the cargo, strike. The play is well presented and the crowd seems skillfully handled. Some consider the union a hotbed of communism. Its activities will be watched with interest. In closing, Mrs. Scott swayed her audience with a review of a second play by Mordaunt Sharp in which rampant humor gives way in the end to pathos, quiet pathos but all the more compelling. The Crime Thu! Blofssmned is up to the very last raucuously sensational, tragedy commercialized. Then suddenly appears the unoffending victim of the venture who impersonally, without bitterness, discloses the terrible consequences of such morbid gloating over crime. There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter And lit by the red skies all day, and after. Frost with a gesture stays the waves that dance, And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, A width, a shining place, under the night. With these lines from Rupert Brooke's The Dead, Mrs. Scott concluded one of the most enjoyable events that has ever occurred in Washington Seminary audi- torium. TO A FRIEND To you, my friend, God has given to you The gift of knowing What is right to do. No harshness, no ugliness Can ever come near So brave a smile As yours, my dear! -Virginia Toombs.

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CURRENT BROADWAY PLAYS By MIRIAM Bom' and Dorm Bowu1aN Mrs. Samuel Scott of New York gave an illustrated lecture on Czlrrwzf Broml- zvay Plays Wednesday evening, March 7, 1934 in the Seminary auditorium. The lecture was sponsored by the American Association of University Women with the idea of bringing a cultural oppor- tunity to Atlanta and adding to the scholarship fund. The talk was delight- fully informal and the audience responded admirably to the changing moods of the speaker. At the beginning of her talk, Mrs. Scott pointed out She Lures Me Nm' and Av Tllrzzzxurzdx Cfaeer as the best sellers, as far as box office returns are considered, but by no means the best material on the stage at present as typical of the season's plays. She commented upon Ab, Wililernexx and Days Vffilfrouf End, marvelous ex- amples of the versatility of Eugene O'Neill. The former is a story of a young boy. ashamed of being decent, in love with a girl whose father objects to him because he is devoted to poetry and that sort of thing. In desperation one night he takes out to dinner a chorus girl. She wants him to drink. He refuses. She wants him to kiss her. To keep from doing this, he manages to fight with the waiter. In the end decency prevails and the boy ceases to be ashamed. Days Wifb- ou! End, according to Mrs. Scott, has been unfairly treated. The ideal behind it is magnificent. It tells of a man who, having lost father and mother and all faith in life as a result, falls in love with a fine woman. Belief returns to him. Then in a moment of weakness he is unfaithful to her. His remorse is terrible and more so when he realizes his wife is ill and he feels she will die. All through the play the two natures of a man are depicted by the use of masks. It is a constant struggle between his evil self and the better side of him. In mad despair over the thought of his wife's dying he rushes to the cathedral and there at the foot of a crucifix struggles for the last time with his evil self and overcomes it. To see this play is an inspiration. The Green Buy Tree, by Mordaunt Sharp, is a play built around an un- reasonable absorbing relationshipf' Mrs. Scott had with her a letter from the author himself in which he agreed with her characterization of it, adding, also, the word unwholesome. A rich man, who believes money capable of anything, buys from a drunkard his son. The boy is brought up in the lap of luxury and pampered in every possible way. He ialls in iove with a practical. fine girl who, realizing how money is ruining his life, tries to help him. She takes him to his real father, but in the end the battle is lost. The insidious germ of luxury has got into his blood. One of the most interesting comments of all w:s on Dorothy Massingham's The Lazke. Katherine Hepburn, the screen act- ress, played the lead and, it seems, did a very miserable job of it. The reason for her failure is quite apparent. She is young and not experienced enough for a part of that sort. She was pitted against excel- lent actors and actresses to whom she cannot hold a candle, and last, Miss Hep- burn has unfortunately allowed her own personality to dominate the character and personality of the role she is portraying. In all of her work this is very noticeable. The Luke tells of a woman with a none too savory past who is planning to be married. Not long before the event she realized she loves her future husband. After the ceremony they drive away com- pletely happy, but the car in which they are leaving skids and plunges into the lake-an artificial body of water planned by a silly, social butterfly of a mother who has sacrificed everything for posi- tion. The young husband is killed and his newly-made wife feels she should follow him. In a very touching scene her aunt tries to dissuade her. Whether she drowns herself or not is left uncertain. The Lake is almost a character in itself. It seems to create the atmosphere of falseness in the world in which the daughter and mother live. Come of Age, by Clemence Dane, had a short life, but it is nevertheless a fine play. A young man, dead a hundred years, pleads to be able to return to life

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f , -flfai rf lf Xiflgf ff 1,1 l ,f X i - ..,1 WI - .QNX f Ar pq F U fiifewon0Xeizf EVER Too LATE fe K fThird Place in the short story can fesf 5 X EEEE L jk f l E yy i j , Ss, , ,ef C1 l 2221. Margaret Gates lay still in the bed where she had lain for many months. She had regained consciousness for the first time in several weeks. A physician and two nurses stood by the bed watching the gaunt figure in the heir-loom four-poster as the life she had so beautifully lived for others slowly ebbed away. They silently waited for some last word or wish to issue from her lips, but no word came. Margaret Gates realized there was no earthly future for her, and, knowing this, she desired to lie quietlv and during her few remaining hours live in the past. She was seemingly unaware of the at- tendants, as she gazed intently at a pho- tograph which was ever present at her bedside. It was the photograph of a young man, a young man whose eyes sparkled with humor, whose mouth was kind but Hrm and whose face showed in every fea- ture the sheer joy of being alive. It was to this face she turned her eyes, for it was John, her nephew, who alone had aided her to become the woman she had dreamed of being as a girl. As she looked at the picture, she turned back the pages of her memory thirty-four years to the night that had been the cli- max of her life. Margaret had been an orphan of wealthy parents. She had ignored the existence of relatives other than her sister, Eleanor, and her sister's four children. She was then twenty and had lived the last few years of her life in her own free way, throwing conven- tions to the wind, laughing at the shocked glances and smothered whispers which always followed her entrance wherever she happened to go. She was not happy. If she stopped to think, she would, disgusted and dis- illusioned, go to the home of her sister and revel in the innocence of the chil- dren. So loving and tender was she with them that they adopted for her the name Pretty Lady. It was the realization of the children's devotion to Margaret that sent Eleanor to her in an effort to make her abandon the wild life she was lead- ing. Margaret had only said, 'Tm sorry, Eleanor, there are so many things lid like to do differently, but it's too late now.', Only two weeks after Margaret's twenty-second birthday, she had been called to the bedside of her sister, whose body had been wretchcdly broken in an accident. Eleanor had turned suffering eyes to Margaret and recalling her child- hood name for her had said, I'm going soon, Peg. I can't take the children. It . . . happened suddenly. No . . . ar- rangements . . . Be good . . . to them, Peg ,... and love them. Margaret had not left the children except for dire necessity since her sister's death. In adapting herself to their moods, de- sires and atmosphere, gentle and comfort- ing, she had forgotten the hard, sophis- ticated circle of her friends until the en- trance of Jim Markly, a worthless cad who had been a most important figure in her past days. His very presence in the room of her new environment seemed sacrilegious to her.