Flucht
die
Finsternis
36 1 eeee
rines
Portsmeut!
Noy 15
Manhattan Side-Show“ by Kon¬
rad Bercovicf (Century) is filled
with great names but it is mediocre
alongside some of the author's other
work.
Sins of America—As Exposed by
the Police Gazette, by Edward Van
Every (Stokes), is a companion vol¬
ume to Sins of New York.“ Thom¬
as Beer docs the introduction.
New York reviewersbare cheering
lustily for Clemence Dane’s" Broome
Stage.“
Simon & Schuster have just
brought out Arthur Schnitzler’s last
short novel, Flight Into Darkness.“
Robert Ripley’s second“Believe
It or Not“ book is not as interest¬
ing as the first.
21K D
Nov 22-31
SCHNITZLER’S LAST—
In striking commemoration almost
immediately after the death of Arthur
Schnitzler, Austrian novelist and
dramatist, comes the publication o.
his last novel, Flight Into Darkness.)
Schnitzler describes the later life and
rnöugnts of à man who is afraid of
going mad.
The story begins when Robert senses
the shadow of a mental disturbance.
Early in life, after brooding over a
friend'’s insanity, Robert had given
his brother, Otto, a document author¬
tzing Otto, a physiclan, to kill him
painlessly, should he show signs of
madness.
Robert becomes more abnormal in
action and reasoning. Realizing this,
and no longer wishing to die if he
becomes insane. Robert’s fear that
Otto will kiil him grows into a persecu¬
tion-mania. The dark and fantastic
powers of this mania press him to
desperation, and carry him on to a
elimax that is superb in its in¬
evitability.
Flight Into Darkness“ is a master¬
ful psychological study. Schnitzler’s
clear, simple style and his naturalness
of approach also create a story that
grips attention.
Though
a short
Vnovel, the book is dramatically intense.
box 6/3
NY Herald-Tribune
WI 2 10
CECÖND PucHS
Bp ARTHUR RUHL=
HE-MAN-THEY-USED-TO-KNOW has made trouble for a lot of
wives in the theater, but in Elena, in Reunion in Vienna, Mr. Robert
* g. sherwood has added decidedly interesting potentialities to a
familiar theme. Elena is one of those occasional women—you will find them
in Russia and half a dozen other European countries—who have had the
youth, imagination and vitality to swim through the revolutionary deluge
that rolled over eastern Europe after the war and to find solid footing in
the new democratic order. Not merely to become “reconciled,“ in a passive
way, but to remake their personalities, their“customs and their codes, and
become active cells in the new regime.
Now suppose the new order, as personified by such a woman, suddenly
to be confanted, in peculiarly persuasive circumstances, with the old life
as persoflified by the man, still young and in no wise fundamentally changed,
with whom she was once in love. Sugebse, in short, Elena, seemingly happy
wife of arfamous and thorough contemporary Viennese psychiatrist, was sud¬
denly to meet, at a reunion of Austrian emigrés, returned to ceiebrate the
Eirthday of their late Emperor, the tempestuously sentimental, half-mad
Hapsburg prince (lately a taxi driver in Nice) to whom she had once beerr
en ardent mistress.
Here, plainly, is no mere instance of a banal wife straying toward the
roses from the humdrum marital path, but that of a woman of unusual
poise, humor and ripeness of experience (for we must take Elena as Miss
Fontanne presents her in the first scene) armed with a whole complex of¬
new experiences and acquired ideas and values, suddenly assailed, through
her amorous memories, in the weakest point in that armor. Just what will
happen to it andto her?, It is in this sense that I speak of the “pôtentialities
of Mr. Sherwood’s theme, for they remain that and nothing more.
Vol can easily picture how a Viennese, Schnitzler, for example, might
handle such a theme, how, indeed, he did Händle something of the sort
in that brief episode of The Married Woman' in The Loves of Anatol,“ so
delicately played last winter by Miss Patricia Collinge and persuasively set
by Mr. Jo Meltzer—a late winter afternoon, somewhere along the Prater,
just as the lights were coming on; the bitter-sweet of old Vienna in the mood
and in the scene, the catch in the volce, I-may-not waiting on I-wodld,
snow drifting down on the palace and the stone arcades, tears on the violets.
and so on. Or how Mr. Shaw, the younger Shaw, that is to say, of Arms
and the Man,“ Captain Brassbound,' or “ Caesar and Cleopatra, might
have played with this clash between decadent feudalism and the present age,
romanticism versus rationalism, and what he might have done with this
amorous paranoiac of a princely Hapsburg.
Mr. Sherwood does little or nothing in either vein, but instead scraps
all the theme's possibilities for an incomprehensible bedroom farce, with Mr.
Lunt and Miss Fontanne indulging in some amorous rough-housing, inimi¬
tably done, to be sure, full of their characteristic vitality and verve, but
empty and disappointing in the circumstances.
Without pang or pain, this recreated Elena, so poised, serene and sure of
herself, and with every air of having come to the emigrés’ reunion per¬
manently to lay a sentimental ghost, dances into the bedroom of the clownish
Hapsburg (for effervescent as Mr. Lunt’s impersonation is, and peppered
with his characteristic jabs of amusing physical frankness, the röle is frankly
clowned“ thiroughout) and then dances out the bathroom door, leaving,
however, her dress behind her. Then when the mad Hapsburg pursues her
into her home and is safely put to bed, she joins him there for the night,
the husband having gone away tc arrange for the exile's escape, and the
three reappear at a quite incomprehensible breakfast scene, with nobody
able to tell just what, psychologically, has happened, and the curtain going
down with everything really interesting left in the alr.
Miss Fontanne and Mr. Lunt carry off their share in the proceedings as
Tonly this accomplished pair could, and you may well feel with many of the
first-night audience that this in itself is cnough. The play, as such, however,
seemed to me very disappointing. Mr. Sherwood is no Shaw, as his several
attempts at imitation have sufficiently demonstrated, nor a Viennese, either.
One wishes that he would stick to the life he knows and moods that are
native. He can be soundly entertaining here, as he proved last winter in
•So This Is New Vork.“
die
Finsternis
36 1 eeee
rines
Portsmeut!
Noy 15
Manhattan Side-Show“ by Kon¬
rad Bercovicf (Century) is filled
with great names but it is mediocre
alongside some of the author's other
work.
Sins of America—As Exposed by
the Police Gazette, by Edward Van
Every (Stokes), is a companion vol¬
ume to Sins of New York.“ Thom¬
as Beer docs the introduction.
New York reviewersbare cheering
lustily for Clemence Dane’s" Broome
Stage.“
Simon & Schuster have just
brought out Arthur Schnitzler’s last
short novel, Flight Into Darkness.“
Robert Ripley’s second“Believe
It or Not“ book is not as interest¬
ing as the first.
21K D
Nov 22-31
SCHNITZLER’S LAST—
In striking commemoration almost
immediately after the death of Arthur
Schnitzler, Austrian novelist and
dramatist, comes the publication o.
his last novel, Flight Into Darkness.)
Schnitzler describes the later life and
rnöugnts of à man who is afraid of
going mad.
The story begins when Robert senses
the shadow of a mental disturbance.
Early in life, after brooding over a
friend'’s insanity, Robert had given
his brother, Otto, a document author¬
tzing Otto, a physiclan, to kill him
painlessly, should he show signs of
madness.
Robert becomes more abnormal in
action and reasoning. Realizing this,
and no longer wishing to die if he
becomes insane. Robert’s fear that
Otto will kiil him grows into a persecu¬
tion-mania. The dark and fantastic
powers of this mania press him to
desperation, and carry him on to a
elimax that is superb in its in¬
evitability.
Flight Into Darkness“ is a master¬
ful psychological study. Schnitzler’s
clear, simple style and his naturalness
of approach also create a story that
grips attention.
Though
a short
Vnovel, the book is dramatically intense.
box 6/3
NY Herald-Tribune
WI 2 10
CECÖND PucHS
Bp ARTHUR RUHL=
HE-MAN-THEY-USED-TO-KNOW has made trouble for a lot of
wives in the theater, but in Elena, in Reunion in Vienna, Mr. Robert
* g. sherwood has added decidedly interesting potentialities to a
familiar theme. Elena is one of those occasional women—you will find them
in Russia and half a dozen other European countries—who have had the
youth, imagination and vitality to swim through the revolutionary deluge
that rolled over eastern Europe after the war and to find solid footing in
the new democratic order. Not merely to become “reconciled,“ in a passive
way, but to remake their personalities, their“customs and their codes, and
become active cells in the new regime.
Now suppose the new order, as personified by such a woman, suddenly
to be confanted, in peculiarly persuasive circumstances, with the old life
as persoflified by the man, still young and in no wise fundamentally changed,
with whom she was once in love. Sugebse, in short, Elena, seemingly happy
wife of arfamous and thorough contemporary Viennese psychiatrist, was sud¬
denly to meet, at a reunion of Austrian emigrés, returned to ceiebrate the
Eirthday of their late Emperor, the tempestuously sentimental, half-mad
Hapsburg prince (lately a taxi driver in Nice) to whom she had once beerr
en ardent mistress.
Here, plainly, is no mere instance of a banal wife straying toward the
roses from the humdrum marital path, but that of a woman of unusual
poise, humor and ripeness of experience (for we must take Elena as Miss
Fontanne presents her in the first scene) armed with a whole complex of¬
new experiences and acquired ideas and values, suddenly assailed, through
her amorous memories, in the weakest point in that armor. Just what will
happen to it andto her?, It is in this sense that I speak of the “pôtentialities
of Mr. Sherwood’s theme, for they remain that and nothing more.
Vol can easily picture how a Viennese, Schnitzler, for example, might
handle such a theme, how, indeed, he did Händle something of the sort
in that brief episode of The Married Woman' in The Loves of Anatol,“ so
delicately played last winter by Miss Patricia Collinge and persuasively set
by Mr. Jo Meltzer—a late winter afternoon, somewhere along the Prater,
just as the lights were coming on; the bitter-sweet of old Vienna in the mood
and in the scene, the catch in the volce, I-may-not waiting on I-wodld,
snow drifting down on the palace and the stone arcades, tears on the violets.
and so on. Or how Mr. Shaw, the younger Shaw, that is to say, of Arms
and the Man,“ Captain Brassbound,' or “ Caesar and Cleopatra, might
have played with this clash between decadent feudalism and the present age,
romanticism versus rationalism, and what he might have done with this
amorous paranoiac of a princely Hapsburg.
Mr. Sherwood does little or nothing in either vein, but instead scraps
all the theme's possibilities for an incomprehensible bedroom farce, with Mr.
Lunt and Miss Fontanne indulging in some amorous rough-housing, inimi¬
tably done, to be sure, full of their characteristic vitality and verve, but
empty and disappointing in the circumstances.
Without pang or pain, this recreated Elena, so poised, serene and sure of
herself, and with every air of having come to the emigrés’ reunion per¬
manently to lay a sentimental ghost, dances into the bedroom of the clownish
Hapsburg (for effervescent as Mr. Lunt’s impersonation is, and peppered
with his characteristic jabs of amusing physical frankness, the röle is frankly
clowned“ thiroughout) and then dances out the bathroom door, leaving,
however, her dress behind her. Then when the mad Hapsburg pursues her
into her home and is safely put to bed, she joins him there for the night,
the husband having gone away tc arrange for the exile's escape, and the
three reappear at a quite incomprehensible breakfast scene, with nobody
able to tell just what, psychologically, has happened, and the curtain going
down with everything really interesting left in the alr.
Miss Fontanne and Mr. Lunt carry off their share in the proceedings as
Tonly this accomplished pair could, and you may well feel with many of the
first-night audience that this in itself is cnough. The play, as such, however,
seemed to me very disappointing. Mr. Sherwood is no Shaw, as his several
attempts at imitation have sufficiently demonstrated, nor a Viennese, either.
One wishes that he would stick to the life he knows and moods that are
native. He can be soundly entertaining here, as he proved last winter in
•So This Is New Vork.“