THE YELLOW JACKET" AT THE KINGS WAY THEATRE.
THE lack of distinction in the production of The Yellow Jacket at the Kingsway Theatre makes the efficiency of this essay in the symbolic method remarkable. The play even in 1913 did not seem particularly well written ; and now, with actors who are apt to say reel for real and brahn for brown, its insufficiencies are more obvious.
It is a pleasant fairy story told with great simplicity, a simplicity which is decidedly extended to the humour ; some of the jokes in which the Property Man figures are a little obvious and often repeated. The dresses and the colour, too, did not seem to me so good as in the pre-War version. Yet in spite of this very simple writing, in spite of mediocre acting and production, The Yellow Jacket gives an attractive evening's entertainment. No one who cares for the theatre should miss it, for the Chinese tradition which it sets before us is full of lessons for the present-day dramatists. If this can be done in the day leaf, what shall be done in the green ? It makes one long to see some of the NE Plays which Mr. Waley translated put upon the stage. Could not the Marlowe Society or the O.U.D.S. go to see The Yellow Jacket and then give us one of the NB Plays ?
I think the lesson for the dramatists is that symbolic scenery —i.e., tables and chairs for a mountain, two white flags for a horse, two coolies carrying banners for a triumphal chariot, a chair on a table for a throne—wants broad outlines in the writing. I mean that The Pilgrim's Progress or Jack the Giant iller would be suitable stories, while the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales or Daisy Miller would not. We want to have our minds focused to the broad curves of incident
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