New Play in Manhattan

Power (by Arthur Arent; Living Newspaper, producer). The unemployed authors and actors who draw $23.86 per week from WPA well know from which side of public issues their paychecks come. Now under the direction of Morris Watson, American Newspaper Guild organizer whose dismissal by the Associated Press has been carried to the Supreme Court (TIME, June 29 et ante), the Living Newspaper's first production was a news-dramatization along MARCH OF TIME lines of the Italian seizure of Ethiopia. The State Department firmly put the lid on this show and the Living Newspaper next turned its attention to Triple-A Plowed Under. This treatment of the Roosevelt Administration's farm program, putting the New Deal in a favorable light and its opponents in a very unfavorable one, required no Government censorship. It is safe to say that Power, one side of the story of the Tennessee Valley Authority, will require none either. Government Playwright Arent (Triple-A Plowed Under), the onetime dramatic critic who marshaled into dramatic form the facts Mr. Watson's researchers found for him, has stacked 33 potent propagandist scenes against private ownership of utilities.

Historically Power goes back to Edison, Ohm and Faraday to trace the origins of the force it presents as a maladministered boon. Technically it begins with the definition of a kilowatt hour ("When this thousand-watt bulb burns for an hour, that's a kilowatt hour"). From then on, by means of a pedagogical disembodied Voice, cartoon and scenic lantern slides, motion pictures and dialog between fictional and actual characters, Power grows into a loud and lively indictment of the U. S. power business's many frauds and follies. By taking stock shares out of one pocket and putting them in another, an impersonator of Samuel Insull demonstrates to a boobish consumer how his great Midwest utilities empire was juggled through the corporate mazes of super-holding companies. There is a short blackout which permits Will Rogers to drawl his celebrated mot: "A holding company is where you hand an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you." There are scenes in which consumers vainly protest their light bills, farmers vainly beg for electric service, a parent explains to his little daughter that the Government would be inefficient if it tried to supply electricity. The little daughter, observing that the people trust the Government to run the post office, concludes: "The people are awfully drunk."

When the chronicle reaches the establishment of TVA and its legal ups-&-downs, the Opposition is given a curt inning. An actor, who evidently did not see dynamic young President Wendell Willkie of Commonwealth & Southern Corp. in the MARCH OF TIME'S TVA sequence last year, dodders out as Mr. Willkie in a white wig to declaim: "The duplication of transmission systems and the giving of money from the Federal Treasury to cities to duplicate our distribution systems is undermining the credit of companies in the TVA area . . . destruction . . . inevitable . . . cruel jest." But by this time the sheer momentum of Playwright Arent's show has carried the day, dramatically at least, against Mr. Willkie. Concluding with the injunctions which currently are hamstringing TVA activity, Power closes on a solemn political note when the entire cast shouts: WHAT WILL THE SUPREME COURT DO?

Power was thoroughly gone over by TVA officials and Federal Power Commissioners during its preparation. Senator Norris, TVA's father, said he would be on hand for the premiere, but remained in Washington. Harry Hopkins arrived, went backstage afterward to declare: "It was a swell show and I appreciate the work you are doing. I wish I could take it over the country during the next two weeks."

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