The Theatre: Revivals

The Father. Mad Johan August Strindberg wrote this play about a mad man in 1887, partly to attack the growing feminist movement in Sweden, partly to work off some of his hatred of woman kind. Revived by Robert Loraine and a company of British actors, it retains all the fury its author put into it 44 years ago, acquires a little more in Mr. Loraine's presentation of the breakdown of a paranoiac mind. Its theme: "Love be tween the sexes is Strife." Adolph (Rob ert Loraine), a Swedish scientist, is con fronted with the problem of what to do about a servant girl who has been seduced by a soldier. Says the soldier (Barrie Livesay) : ''How can any man know if he is the father?" This is the germ of the scientist's obsession. His wife (Dorothy Dix) cunningly suggests that he may not be the father of her child, and persistent pondering of this problem drives him mad. He believes all the women of his household are allied against him, even his daughter (Maisie Darrell) and his old nurse (Haidee Wright). By the end of Act I he is rushing out into a blizzard crying: "To hell with all women!" At the end of Act II he hurls a lighted lamp at his wife. The final curtain finds him a gibbering, grinning lunatic bound in a strait-jacket.

Mad, morbid though it may be, The Father is an impressive play, intelligently acted. Most Manhattan critics, objecting to Actor Loraine's violent acting, forgot the violence was Playwright Strindberg's. Manhattan playgoers, more impressed, gave the players repeated curtain calls, demanded from tired Mr. Loraine a curtain speech.

The Father lost nothing by the fact that it was preceded by Sir James Mathew Barrie's one-act War morsel, Barbara's Wedding.

The Streets of New York, or Poverty Is No Crime. "It is a gloomy moment in history. In France the political cauldron seethes and bubbles with uncertainty. Russia hangs as usual like a cloud dark and silent upon the horizon of Eu rope ; while all the energies, resources and influences of the British Empire are sorely tried, and are yet to be tried more sorely, in coping with the vast and deadly Indian insurrection. ... Of our own troubles no man can see the end. If we are only to lose money and by painful poverty be taught wisdom, no man need seriously despair."

Thus ran an editorial in Harper's Weekly for Oct. 10, 1857. As uncannily close to present economic conditions as the Harper's editorial is The Streets of New York by Dion Boucicault, which also first saw the light of day in 1857. Revived with a triumphantly light touch by the New York Repertory Company, The Streets of New York is many a cut above any theatrical resurrection seen in and about Manhattan for seasons.

First scene is laid in the counting house of Gideon Bloodgood (hiss!), a merciless moneychanger who is about to succumb to the panic of 1837. Although not one line of the old script has been changed, Manhattan spectators, aware of last year's Bank of U. S. failure (TIME, Dec. 22, et seq.), will believe that a modern interpolation must have been made when the collapse of the "United States Bank"— an institution of President Van Buren's time—is spoken of.