Tendencies

War Plays are Coming

Last week there was noted in this column the widening ripple consequent to the recent plunge of Hungarian plays into the Manhattan theatrical pool. This is, one supposes, what is termed a "tendency." Now tendencies have a forbidding sound about them. Somehow they seem sinister. One speaks of the husband of one's neighbor as having a tendency to drink too much. It was a tendency in the Borgia family to fortify their enemy's Chianti with toxic drops. Yet giving money to beggars is not described as a tendency. It is a form of personal advertising, and becomes a tendency only when the advertiser performs it to such an extent that his family have him removed to the hospital on the grounds that the fractional balance of his wits is against him.

Therefore it is with hesitation that tendencies in the Theatre are discussed. Let them be called, rather, inclinations and let there be further inspection of the opening season's inclinations.

Though the younger generation was damned, defended and dismissed as a back number at least two years ago, there have already appeared two plays (Dancing Mothers and The Best People) in which the parents weep and wonder at the antics of their offspring. Apparently the ink of playwriting has not yet exhausted its quota on this topic. There will be others.

Already one play has lived and died in an effort to retell the general narrative theme of Abie's Irish Rose. Reports from distant parts indicate that the producers of this uncannily successful product will spend much money through the season exhorting the population to beware of imitations.

Kid Boots is another success which has accumulated its train of similarities. It is a musical comedy based on the vicissitudes of golf and bootlegging. Already Top Hole, a golf musical comedy, is announced with others in the offing.

Yet the most significant inclination of the new season is the return of the War play. Next week TIME will be occupied with discussions of Nerves by John Farrar and Stephen Vincent Benet and of Glory by Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson. Hard on their heels will come Havoc, fresh from a London success, and The Conquering Hero, by Allan Monkhouse, an Englishman, under the beneficent auspices of the Theatre Guild. At least two others are now in preparation. The swagger and tinsel of war in the theatre of eight years ago has been discarded. The majority of these new productions are bitter, ironic dissections of sorrow. Probably none of them will possess the mordant satiric force of Shaw's Arms and the Man. Yet their mission is clear. The young men who have written them have been to war. After five years their protests must be heard. W. R.