in the thinly disguised portrait of Billy Sunday, a scathing caricature unequalled in American stage history. The Kaiser, or rather something representing "nationality," was there too, in less recognizable form; and many another vice of modern civilization.

The Servant in the House was substituted when the newer play failed to please, and was well staged and capably acted in general. The production confirmed our opinion that this is one of the best plays in the whole range of modern English drama, and one which should appear on our stage for a few weeks every year or two.

Charles Rann Kennedy writes for an audience that is still limited in numbers; but the pleasure these two plays afforded us suggests again that the system which tends to limit the New York stage to dramatic best-sellers is all wrong-that there should be a theatre catering to the small audience that is specialized in intelligence, that likes intellectual drama or æsthetic drama better than the popular journalistic play.

The Isadorable
Duncans

SPEAKING of what is æsthetic reminds us that the Isadora Duncan dancers have been appearing at the Neighborhood Playhouse and at Carnegie Hall. In the performances of these dancing girls we have experienced the highest æsthetic pleasure, the rarest delight, that has come to us in the entire year. In the dancing of Anna Duncan we have found a living sculpturesque beauty that suggests a new and glorious widening of the arts of the theatre, and a more complete union of the lyric and plastic arts. From the youthful and flower-like Liesa we have caught a different but no less genuine thrill. But one must see them dance to know what we wish to say. Like music, their art is indescribable—and their appeal to our senses similarly irresistible.

At the Actors' and Authors'

WE did not see the first production by the new Actors' and Authors' Theatre; but when a bill of four one-act plays was announced we went with keen curiosity to know what these Broadway professionals would accomplish when they attempted the "little theatre stunt." If we had left the theatre when the program was half finished—and there were those who did, gloomily - we should have said that this was the most hopeless exhibition of half-baked experimentation that we had seen this year; and we have been at practically every amateur playhouse in New York during the season.

The first play was an intimate bit of English dialect comedy. Despite Whitford Kane's effective interpretation, the other players queered the production by bringing their restless acting to parts that demanded merely sympathy, sincerity and quiet understanding. Sam Hume's semi-amateur group in Detroit could have done the piece justice, and many another little theatre could do it acceptably-but these professionals merely reminded one of a pretty good instrument badly out of tune.

We had been told that the second play on the bill, a musical thing called Art's Rejuvenation, would interest us especially, being really Artistic. We had our doubts right then; but the event was worse than anything one could anticipate. It was, dramatically, just what the commercial artist turns out when the boss tells him to cut loose and give 'em art. It was a symbolic story about Art's coming to life again, under the ministrations of Sculpture, Painting, etc. But if Art has really come to that pass, we hope he will die, swiftly and beyond hope of resuscitation. Mediocre, crass, utterly false!

Thus far on the program only melancholy, somewhat tempered by amusement at the outrageous stupidity of doing such things in public.

Then followed two plays so enjoyable that one forgot one's resentment: two productions so good that one wonders how producers wise enough to

choose them could have been stupid enough to present the other things on the same bill. It was perhaps Minnie Dupree's remarkable acting that lifted Nocturne out of the class of dangerously sentimental comedy. In her hands the play became an absorbing and appealing bit of romantic story-telling. The last play on the bill was an immensely diverting bit of foolishness, satirizing the writers of best-seller novels. Edith Taliaferro contributed some unusually good acting, and the rest of the cast was capable. The production was just the sort of light materal which the Washington Square Players should have given us in place of the vapid burlesque "fillers" so often seen at the Comedy Theatre.

If the Actors' and Authors' Theatre lives up to its best experience it will become a valuable link in the chain of experimental companies which is being forged from coast to coast. If it lives down to its worst offerings it ought to die instanter. Our best wishes are with it-and despite that terrible Art thing on its second program, we do believe in its future.

THE Washington Square Players by no means went out The Farewell at the Comedy in a blaze of glory. Their record would have been better if they had suspended in the winter, when they were doing really interesting things, instead of after the production of Mrs. Warren's Profession and their final bill of one-act plays. These left much to be desired in both acting and mounting; and the production of Mrs. Warren's Profession and Salome on succeeding programs suggests an unfortunate lastminute effort to attract the public through sensationalism.

Mrs. Warren's Profession suffered merely through mediocre standards of production. Even Mary Shaw seemed only partially convincing. The play still stands as one of the many worth-while things which New York has yet to see under proper conditions.

On the final program of the season Salome was the only outstanding feature. The production was thoroughly incompetent. There was no unity: Rollo Peters and Gareth Hughes opened in one key, Mme. Yorska played in another, Louis Calvert added another (still worse), and Helen Westley put a final touch of vulgarity on the whole thing. Walter Hampden was well above the average, but it was Rollo Peters who carried away the honors of the evening. The thing that interested us most about the production was the ease with which this amateur player showed up, by means of his beautiful voice modulation and the sincerity and quietness of his acting, the artificiality and lack of understanding of his more professional fellow-actors. It makes one hope that when the time comes for a real art theatre in this country it may be able to recruit a company of artist-actors able to render poetic drama poetically.

The future of the project that was the Washington Square Players is not promising. Doubtless the fine spirit that was behind the venture in the beginning will blossom again, and we trust under more favorable conditions, when peace releases Ralph Roeder, Edward Goodman and the many others who have been called away by the war. In the meantime a vaudeville firm, Lewis and Gordon, have bought the effects and name of the organization, and employed enough of the company to make their claim of being successor to the original group plausible to the general public. Their announcement, however, leaves grave doubts as to the value, other than commercial, of what may be done in the Players' name hereafter. In reality the Washington Square group is now only a memory; their valuable experimental workand there was much of it at times—is a matter of theatrical history; and their mistakes should be, from this time on, lost to record except as they may serve to show new experimental groups what to avoid.

In Sam Hume's production of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus at the Arts and Crafts Theatre, reported at some length in our Spring issue, the characters playing the Seven Deadly Sins wore masks designed by Katherine McEwen. Two of the masked figures are shown on this and the following page. The one above is Pride.

By HERMANN ROSSE

FLARING drapery of smaragd, of light vermilion and magenta. Flags and feathers flaming in a battle of primary colors, goaded to stinging by black and gold and shining mirrors.

An orgy of sound and color and shining lights, which dazes. Now and then a passage of color or a change in rhythm, which dominates.

Symbolic grime, symbolic costume, scenery, music; symbolic everything.

A theatre in Shanghai.

A shining floor reflecting wonders of sculptured masks, of brocades and jewelry. A sacristy displayed with measured formality in cadenced motion. A high mass of beauty.

The Nō.

Outside, signs like Florentine banners, which flap in the sun. Inside, an audience sipping tea. A day grown gradually old over a waxing crowd. A haze of twilight, half hiding expectant faces turned toward a vision of peacock splendor, approaching on the flower walk. Her court dress trailing, slowly moving her fan of gold and flowers, past blue and black brocades and purple and red gold. A lacquered face in a setting of jet black. crown of golden combs. My Yeizan prints come true.

The Kabuki.

A

The salient characteristic of the oriental theatre is that the ceremonial, the ritual part, in the East is more obvious than with us.

The measured steps of the Japanese Nō player and the Javanese Wajang Wong actor, and the straightforward way in which their musicians become part of the performance, suggest the religious ceremony.

The Chinese stage, with its scenery of screens, its embroideries to indicate a city, its mysterious, dazzling color, its fascinating music and rhythmic movements, suggests the Japanese Nō, the old Japanese aristocratic play, which once seen is never again forgotton.

In the Nō every movement is part of a perfectly designed unit; traditional it may be, but transportingly beautiful.