THE THEATRE.
" SHABBETHAI ZEBI " AT THE NEW SCALA.
Tan Yiddish Art Theatre from New York began its season here last week with a drama in the good old style. The performance being in Yiddish, a synopsis was provided for the uninitiated, and, reading it, one seemed once again to be running anxiously through the synopsis in a Covent Garden Grand Opera programme of Boris Godounov, Ivan the Terrible, or one of those crowded and eventful Italian operas based on the invaluable Sardou. The play, whose title is the name of its hero, is called Shabbethai Zebi in the programme, Sabbatt Zevi in the synopsis, and Sabbatai Zvi in the theatre list in the Times, and the author is J. Khulaysky in the synopsis, and J. Julawsky in the programme ; so that we begin with a certain sense of variety.
It is the story of a Jew of Smyrna who proclaimed himself Messiah during the seventeenth century. We find him imprisoned in the castle at Adrianople by the Sultan ol
Turkey, but he is allowed an unusually large measure of freedom. His wife, with whom, in consideration of his high calling, he is on merely platonic terms, is with him, and delegations of Jews from many lands visit him and quarrel about him or hail him as their redeemer. At the end of the first act a messenger summons him into the presence of the Sultan.
In the second act we discover the Sultan Mohammed IV. reclining in the midst of his court. The dresses, divan, and canopy are gorgeous, the daylight varies from golden to the richest rose colour, and beautiful, scantily clad ladies sit on the floor and sway their bodies and arms in the true indispen- sable fashion. In short, everything is very Eastern. The Sultan is a fierce, capricious, nervous little man in violent contrast to Sabbati, who appears before him, quiet, dignified and superbly robed and crowned and followed by a great noisy retinue of Jews. He so impresses the Sultan that he agrees to yield up his crown if Sabbati will prove himself the true Messiah by allowing three poisoned arrows to be shot at his naked breast. Unfortunately, just as the test is about to be applied, a horrible change occurs in the lighting ; lurid clouds stream across the sky, and an appalling thunderstorm puts an end to the act and postpones the ordeal till to-morrow.
In the third act Sabbati is found preparing himself by prayer and flagellation for the morrow. He scourges himself so furiously that his wife hears and, rushing in, snatches the scourge from him, and he sinks exhausted into her arms.
Thus he passes the night. In the morning he awakes to the fourth act, horrified at his fall into mere uxorious mortality. Obviously he is not meant to be a Messiah, and when he appears again before the Sultan he flings off his robe and crown and denounces himself as an impostor ; but to save the honour and dignity of the Jewish religion he declares his conversion to Mohammedanism. His wife is delighted to exchange a Messiah for a husband, but the emotional strain of his renunciation and self-sacrifice has been too much for Sabbati, who falls dying to the ground in a welter of darkness and limelight.
It is, of course, difficult to do justice to a play in an unknown tongue. The story, as will be seen, has fine possibilities for the stage, but the impression produced by the play is that for its author " situation " and the spectacular come before emotion and veracity. Sabbati, though acted with dignity and a certain fanatical intensity by Mr. Maurice Swartz, never becomes quite human. He is a creature of the theatre, and his intensity is that of the stage rather than of the soul. His wife, Sarah, too, is always the operatic prima donna for whom, no matter what the occasion, white satin is de rigueur. By far the most convincing character in the play is the Sultan ; in it Mr. Mark Schweid gave a subtle and memor- able study of a weak, violent and capricious neurotic. It was a fine piece of acting.
The crowd, simple, fanatic, noisy and highly emotional, is extremely well done. MARTIN ARMSTRONG.
Previous page
