PLAYS AND PLAYERS
By Arthur Pollack
THE present season in the theater has produced so far four native comedies of more than ordinary quality. Of the four Zona Gale's "Miss Lulu Bett" is the least felicitous as entertainment but the most arresting as criticism of life in these United States. Clare Kummer in "Rollo's Wild Oat," pokes irresponsible, gentle fun at human nature in bulk; Frank Craven gets in "The First Year" a great deal of amusement out of the very natural antics of his fellow bipeds in small towns, creating good-natured laughter; and in "The Bad Man," Porter Emerson Browne, while giving vent to no little cheap melodramatic barking, at the same time takes an amiable bite out of the heel of American complacency. But Zona Gale comes to battle in "Miss Lulu Bett," armed to the teeth, and what she accomplishes in the way of committing successful and devastating assault upon the vanity of one type of our citizenry is enough to get her name anathematized in all the respectable homes of the self-righteous. The male protagonist of her biting comedy comes pretty close to being the "average man," God help him. No playwright in the country has ever before quite so completely and cruelly peeled the skin off this smug person.
The play at the Belmont Theater discloses a small-town family the head of which is one of those inferior gentlemen who try to fool their unconscious by a conscious assumption of superiority. He is as honest as the day is long and twice as stupid, a virtuous tyrant, upright, direct, dull, cruel, devoid entirely of all the finer sensibilities. The woman whom he loves and cherishes in strict accordance with promises made at the altar, is a very suitable mate. A good wife and mother, she has not a single brain within her head nor an idea that is not a product of mob thinking. Neither of them ever violates a convention in thought or action. They are righteous by rote. They exist on the earth like the print of a rubber stamp on white paper.
These exemplary two constitute the environment for Lulu Bett, unlucky sister of the vapid though ever so virtuous wife. And slowly but with indomitable perseverance they have made a mess of the poor girl's life. She is the servant in the house. Once she may have been attractive; now nobody ever looks at her. Occasionally her pies attract attention to her, but that is all. Her brother-in-law, abetted by his wife, has warped and gnarled her character until she has turned into a worthless bit of drab humanity. All of the windows of life are shut tight to her, most of all the window of love.
One day, however, a breezy man of middle age happens along and sympathizes. If he does not love her he pities her at least and is anxious to make her life a bit more pleasant. Quite by chance the two are married. And the unexpected show of affection on the part of this one male human being makes the world for her at last an interesting place. When it is discovered that he is already married and has a wife still living, her sterling relatives try their best to crush her again by way of saving their good repute. They tell her that the man was only amusing himself with her, that there was no real liking on his part after all. She does not believe and she is right. He proves that he did actually feel fond toward her. That is the knowledge that she clings to. It puts bloom into her cheeks, makes her glad. Whereupon she sets out into the world resolved to find happiness somewhere and somehow.
A true and in the main, convincing picture of life as it is very often lived! When Zona Gale lies about her characters—and she lies not infrequently—her prevarications are a result of a too zealous effort to tell the whole truth. In her anxiety to reveal her characters as they live, she has made the mistake of exhibiting them as something more than life size. Doubtless part of the exaggeration is due to the fact that she is trying to crowd the incidents of a novel into a play and, not being so familiar with the play form as she is with that of the novel, she does not realize that the stage affords insufficient room for all she has to say. Also, no doubt, she is just a little vain of her acute understanding of the people she portrays. Her vanity tempts her to load the comedy with every bit of comment on their natures that she can think of. She has, in fact, one or two of the characteristics of a scandal monger. She tells everything she knows. Yet the scandal monger is most puissant when he or she insinuates. At least a quarter of what she says would be more impressive if merely suggested. All too frequently "Miss Lulu Bett," ceases to be a fluid, plastic play and becomes a documentary evidence of Miss Gale's exhaustive research in the small cities of the country, a document with an over-abundance of foot-notes.
