"From Morn to Midnight." By George Kaiser. At the Gate
Theatre
From Morn to Midnight is Herr Kaiser's most satisfactory play. "The basis of an industrial civilisation is the quest for money : argal, it is the root of all evil." Equipped with this generalisa- tion, Herr Kaiser makes his attack on the principle of enforced submission to a code Of industrialism. To illustrate the rule, he chooses a particular instance : the psychological effects of a day of sudden liberty on a man whose spirit has been deadened by a lifetime of subservience to routine.
Opportunity, attractively disguised as adventure, comes to a bank official, caged behind the bars of a cashier's desk, in the form of a beautiful woman who calls at the bank. There is a hitch in the details of her letter of credit : a confirmatory document has failed to arrive. Her anxiety encourages him to make of the glamour of her appearance a pretext for abandon- ing the formulas and solidity of his own existence. He em- bezzles a few thousand pounds and pursues her. When she rejects him (for the excellent reason that the expected letter has in the meantime arrived), he takes a short cut to disaster by stampeding into indulgence of the first impulses which occur to him. At midnight, having disposed of his money and proved to his own satisfaction that life is not worth living, he shoots himself.
The central figures of Herr Kaiser's story, embodied ideas rather than living characters, move through a series of frag- mentary episodes which are habitually unreal, never in- significant. Their emotions are neither defined nor analysed. Their experiences, fragmentarily presented, have a cumulative force which underlines the accuracy of the author's generalisa- tion. Mr. Peter Godfrey's production is admirably swift, secure from unnecessary mannerisms : his performance in the part of the defaulting cashier is among the best he has given. The play is an adequate reply to little jokes about Expression-
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