The Theatre
[" THE ROAD TO ROME." BY ROBERT EMMET SHERWOOD. AT THE STRAND THEATRE.-" TWENTY BELOW." BY ROBERT NICHOLS AND JIM TULLY. AT THE GATE THEATRE STUDIO.]
WHEN the editor of a famous American comic paper produces a play founded on Roman history, you know that the founda- tions will not be of Roman substantiality. The scholar and the archaeologist may forget their Livy, their Appian and their Polybius at the Strand Theatre ; the infant schoolboy, his Cornelius Nepos. We are really in New York ; or, if you like, in Hannibal, Missouri, U.S A. ; where, by the way, Mark Twain, that other caricaturist of old times, spent his tender years. Is not Hannibal Cave described in Tom Sawyer ? This accident of names may have prompted Mr. Robert Emmet Sherwood to satirize the real Hannibal—whom, by the way, we can never know much about, because the other side wrote his history.
Is Mr. Sherwood's Hannibal comic enough ? Not quite. He strikes one, in Mr. Philip Merivale's interpretation, as a
moody, indecisive person, who may have resided in Boston, and read Emerson, or even Santayana. In defiance of history, he is about to swoop upon Rome after Cannae, elephants and all ; the elephants being under the control of a young " sub of whom Mr. Henry Kendall makes indeed a figure of fun.
Why doesn't Hannibal attack ? Not because the famous Fabiuslz-Yes, the Cunetator—comes to parley with hith sous la tente ;• for Fabius, Fabius Maximus, is here Minimus and a total fool ; but because Fabius's lovely Greek wife 'appears; like Flauberes nearly contemporary :Sitaninibo; to vamp the enemy of Rome. And why does this elegant Amytis (Miss Isibefieans) thus unman the Carthagian, who, according to Livy, was possessed of a " More than Punic perfidy " ? Is she a patriot, a."Volumnia ? By no means : merely, she his seen' through war, has risen volupttiously " abOve the conflict," has been feeding Caesar and Cleopatra, Heartbreak House,. and, perhaps, Troilus and Cressida. "
No ; not exactly that ; for she still believes in heroes. Only, her heroes must be " real great " men She talks of Aristotle—meaning President Wilson. And behold, the cruel Hannibal utterly collapses, not solely under the hypnot- ism of her charm, but also in response to her cloudy chatter about nothing. Her blather about " the human equation" defeats him. He will make for Capua. He will spare Rome. Rome, some day, will destroy herself. She took rather a long time (after Hannibal) to do it ! But what of that ? These wars lead to ruin in the often deferred end.
You will see that Mr. Sherwood's fund of philosophy, the substance of his satire, as well as his style and sense of proba- bilities, are not so ample, so secure, as those of his Shavian models. Almost any labels, indeed, could be affixed to his puppets. Any costumes might clothe them. His Hannibal might be a Tussaud Charlemagne, an Attila, a Genghis Khan. It is all a piece of sarcasm, which, however, looms in the night of this summer theatrical season as a star brighter than any of the transient lights which flicker and go out so fast, one after the other, that the weekly dramatic critic is hard put to it to find a play that will not have disappeared before his notice is in print. Apart from Thunder in the Air, no play has deserved to succeed, and few have succeeded, since Young Woodley. That still triumphs. Is it not a hint to managers that they would be wise, since most commercial plays fail, to risk themes not so obviously commercial. They might then meet failure again. But a little glory would be added to bankruptcy.
No one will accuse Mr. Peter Godfrey (at the Gate Theatre) of being too commercial. Strange that one of our few ardent producers should be marked down by the aediles for a fussy assault ! One may regret the recent prosecution of the " Gate "—regret that a spy went there to overhear and be shocked by the " bad language " of The Hairy Ape. Undeni- ably there is much bad American language in Twenty Below- " below zero " : a temperature in which crooks, yeggs (cracksmen), dotards and imbeciles crouch round the jail stove somewhere in the Middle West. To them enter an urchin who turns out to be a girl. She is " amongst the Wolves " indeed ! But in an excellent scene—I think the best scene in this violent, yet idealistic play—the girl, Blazes (Miss Beatrix Lehmann), manages to disarm her persecutors by fixing upon one (admirably played by Mr. Dennis Wyndham) to keep off the rest. But why, having cornered him and most skilfully appealed to his protective instinct, and to the " makings of a man " in him, does she fall to the brute, fall in love with him, fall to talking of stars and eter- nities over his dead body, when he's shot by a brute viler even than he ? . Why ? Because youthful dramatists, exhausted by the violence they mistake for realism, commonly do relapse into sentimentality, for a rest. Blaze, at the end, is almost as sweet as Oliver Twist. But I forgot. He's a woman. Say, then, Little Dorrit.
As in his queer novel, just published, Under the Yew, Mr. Nichols has managed to cast into the rhythm of his " myth " a passionate eloquence which alternately shocks and appeases. Meanwhile, his friend " Jim "—the other author—has, I suppose, provided the local colour and the at times unintel- ligible slang. It may not • be useless to recommend visitors to the Gate to take with them the current number- of The . American Mercury, which opportunely includes a " yegg's "
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