SOME NEW PLAYS.*
Miss MACNAMARA has published four short plays in the series " Plays for a People's Theatre," of which series I recently re- viewed Mr. D. H. Lawrence's Touch and Go. I am afraid that Mrs. Hodges1 falls, to a certain extent, under the same condemnation as Touch and Go ; that is to say, their desire for propaganda has blinded the writers to aesthetic considerations. The play ;s in two acts, and shows first a committee meeting of a Local Housing Authority. There is the toadying chairman, the bullying lady bountiful, the weak-kneed and ignorant architect, and the working-woman heroine. Miss Macnamara has not been able to resist the temptation of grossly over-drawing the chairman and Mrs. Clam-Digby, and they are so absurd that some excellent points against the really foolish attitudes of real people are lost. In the second act, which is a delightful comedy scene in a cottage, these failings are not apparent. Here is indeed a fine example of how hostility blinds the eyes. Miss Macnamara hates Mrs. Clam- Digby so much that Mrs. Clam-Digby appears in her eyes as a. super or sub-natural being. One can imagine that a witch's waxen image of her enemy would suffer many such malforma- tions on the physical plane. The Witc11,2 though not a. propaganda play in the same sense, suffers to a lesser degree from the same trouble, but Light-Gray or Dark F3 and Love Fibs4 are in their several ways excellent—the three characters in Love Fibs being drawn with sympathy, and therefore success. Light- Gray or Dark? is a moving little tragedy without .a villain, and with a more or less happy ending. All these plays would be very suitable for acting by amateurs.
Anything but a " Play for a People's Theatre " is Mr. Fir- bank's Princess Zoubaroff, an exceedingly foppish satiric drama. There is something vaguely unpleasant in itsfin de sit cle attitude. Mr. Firbank has, however, an extraordinary knack of writing dialogue, and his entirely odious people move and breathe and are completely real. Perhaps some day Mr. Firbank will give us a comedy that is not all satire ; when he does, it might prove an exceedingly brilliant acting play. The note of contempt is too much sustained in The Princess Zoubaroff to make it possible for acting except for a very special audience. TARN.
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