Feature Section Y 41v juattij. Feature Section VOL. XXXV. No. 135 ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, SUNDAY, MAUCI 29, 1925 EIGHT PAGES 0OUw A 1 4 F ^' :r Y , _~ , p 'V Jy y,' i h.3 uG! f 11" p CLUB, "i Sutton Vane's.Weird Masterpiece Will Be Presented April 1 acd 3 at the Whitney Theatre g Wednesd Will Open First Amateur Production of the PNay Which Delighted New York and London. ay's Curtain Daniel Quirk and Paul Stephenson Direct the Play (111?t r, L , pie y° i F S r. '. .. - 6. 4L By Robert Henderson C CCASIONALLY, Gnce in ten or a dozen, a hundred or a thousand yearh, originality appears in the theatre. Aristotle, perhaps someone else, has said that there are only eight possible dramatic situations. Sutton Vane, however, has unquestionably presented a theme that, in the last century at least, has been untouched. This unknown English author challenged the entire theatrical world two seasons ago when late in Sep- tember, backed only by his own conviction, he pre- sented his play, "Outward Bound", to a dilletante London audience at the Everyman theatre. Immediately the piece was transferred to an up- town house, and early in January was produced by William Harris in this country. The opening was in Atlantic City with a cast which included Alfred Lunt, J. M. Kerrigan, Margola Gillimore, Beryl Mer- cer, and Leslie Howard. Despite such distinguished artists, the audience openly disliked the play even to the point of actual hissing. The 'New York pre- mier, on the contrary, definitely reversed this criti- cism, and the unknown Sutton Vane with his start - ling novelty became the outstanding financial and artistic success of the season. The basis for the play's odd effectiveness centers about the skillful, way in which the situation is un- folded and the weird story that does not certainly unravel itself until the final curtain. The opening scene shows the smoke-room on a small ocean-go- ing liner, quite a conventional, ordinary place yet somehow slightly pervaded by an odd, strange at- wosphere. A Mr. Prior walks un to the bar for a drink; he is a young man, Prior, but beaten-down soggy, with a half-snarling attitude toward a world that has cruelly cheated him. ie is a drunk, on his own admission, a "weak character"; at the present moment he is recovering from an unusually thick night-somehow the exact details escape his mind, though he dare not admit it even to himself...... Presently the other passengers appear-the boat is to sail in a. few minutes. First an unassuming English padre, a naive young clergyman, sincere but a strange mixture of pat religious nostrums and bashful simplicity. He in turn is followed by Mrs. Cliveden-Banks, glorying in her hyphen, and Mrs. Midget, a prosaic, sallow char-woman, Ann and Henry, the two lovers, and finally Mr. Lingley with iis complex of business efficiency. It seems that no one ca'n actually remember where there are going. And then there are so many other Top Row: Valentine Davies, "ScrubbY)"; Barre lill, "Henry"; Jack I-asbebrger, lom Prior"; Left side, Lillian Bronson, "Mrs. Cliveden-Banks; Riglt side, Elizabe h Strauss, . There is the situation, but more vital than the detailed plot is the reaction of the individual char- acters to this vague uncertainty and the blasting way in which it reveals their personalities. Mrs. Cliveden-Banks finally shows her real nature with all its mean, crass spitefullness. Lingeley stands stripped as the unscrupudous, unbending grasper that he is. So it goes: Prior, Mrs. Midget, the padre, all of them utterly, pitifully unmask them- selves as they approach the terrifying uncertainty of life and it retribution after death. Kenneth MacGowan in the March, 1924, number of the Theatre Arts Monthly, in estimating the power of this strange play, wrote the following criticism: "It is a mystery play, "Outward Bound', a drama of the hereafter written by a youig Englismnan, Sutton Vane, who learned something whereof he speaks through the desperate device of being shell- shocked in the war. His characterization is merely a matter of types, and his dialogue is conventional; yet he seems to possess a rare sort of intuition about states of mind on the borderland of con- sciousness, an intuition .which enables him to -estab- lish an astonishing mood. "'Outward Bound' begins with something as ordinary as the smoke room of a steamship. Yet within half an hour Vane is able to seize and hold his audience in the grip of a most remarkable sit- uation. Little by little his characters bear in upon one another and upon the 'audience that they are bound for a new world. It is a double discovery, a discovery for the people who walk through the play and for the people who watch them. Vane accomp- lishes it with remarkabel deftness. In the face of the most ordinary sort of characterzation, he:is "Anne"; Second row: Paul Vickers, "Mr. Tingej),"; lInhllis Turnbull, "Mrs. Midget"; Robert Henderson, "Rev. Duke"; Below, Dale Shafer, "Rev. Thompson." Alril first and third, at the Whitney theatre marks the firty-first annual production by this organiza- tion, the oldest dramatic society on the campus. In a large measure it is a definite departure for the club, which formerly, almost without exception, has justified its name and selected such recognized com- edies as "The Magistrate", "Bunty Pulls the Strings". "Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire", or tto name its more recent (fAerings, "Pygmalion" Mr. Pim Passes By",and "'Captain Applejack.'' "Outward Bound", of course, is largely saturated with skilfully balanced humor, but its actual theme tends definitely toward tense melodrama, toward the nove Ity of a strange theme rather than conventional farce. In the absence of Professor Nelson, who has sponsored Comedy club for the past six years, "Out- wvard Bound" is being staged by Daniel L. Quirk, Jr., and Paul Stephenson, the directors of the Ypsilanti players. Mr. Quirk, the founder of this nationally famous group of actors-better know, perhaps, through the country even th.an in Michigan-has the significant distinction of heading a Little Theatre that, now in its tenth season, is not only one of the most completely equipped playhouses but one of the most ambitious nonp."ofessional organizations in the country. Paul Stephenson has studied under such recog- nized producers as Maurice Browne, Sam Hume and Irving Pichel, and has also come closely in contact with Edward Gordon Craig through a visit last spring to his villa just outside of Rapallo, Italy. It is Mr. Stephenson who has taken actual charge of the rehearsals, and it is his keen, active insistence on simplicity that must become, the touchstone in the success of the production. peared in numerous other campus productions, their respective repertoire making something of a petty "Who's Who." John Hassberger, as an example, has taken important parts in "Captain Applejack", "Pyg- malion", "Bunty Pulls the Strings", "At the Hawk's Well", and "Cotton Stockings." Barre Hill has been one of the leading men in the last two editions of the Michigan Union Opera; Valentine Davies has played in "The Admirable Bashville", "The Man In the Bowler Hat", and "Arms and the Man", while Phyllis Turnbull has been cast in "Captain Apple- jack", "The Playboy of the Western World", and "Hop-o'-my-Thumb." Robert Henderson has ap- peared in "Beyond the Horizon", "The.Man With the Flower in His Mouth", "Tickled To Death", and "The Playboy of the Western World", and Paul Vic- kers, who took the title-role in "The Admirable Bash- ville", has been prominent in dramatics at the Uni- versity of California. Nothing in the theatre is certain, of course-so much depends-but aside from all false modesty, the cast for the production is probably as exact to type as any that could be assembled on the campus. The annual Comedy club production is invariably the most important performance of the year in college dramatics, and this year, especially, is it significant, partly because of the directors, but especially be- cause of the play itself. An amateur performance, after all, stands or falls on the striking virtue of its situations. A tenuous, whimsical comedy, save in rare cases, is almost cer- tain to result in an undistinguished production, if only because the plays lack the technique and per- sonality necessary to hold the interest in thmselvs, but a melodrama such as "R. U. R."-or "Outward Bound"-is almost entirely actor-proof. So grip- ping and compelling is its plot, its tense, breathless story that it forces attention by the weight of its own inertia: it is sure-fire theatre. . ... Arthur Hornblow in the March, 1924, number of the Theatre Magazine brings out this point even more clearly. "An extraordinary play," he says, "Fraught with a simple significance and philosophy is this 'Outward Bound', this unusual composition which has so stirred materialistic New York and London. It move sone to a very poignant pity. Yet there are touches of acute humor relieving the som- ber shade of its atmosphere. 'Its contention is that death does not release us from our struggles nor punish us for our weak- nesses, but that it only gives us a new start in our tered: the other world is only this world a fter all- the dulle t part of this world, at that. "Yet just, when the situation should be going most expeditiously to pot, something comes in from Vane's tortured consciousness to save it. Through the play glide two strange, shadowy young people. They are lovers, ecstatic lovers, and they seem tor- tured by some sense of wrong done in the other world; nnlik )the rest they aIre ;.ge of neither life nor death. As they play soems about to close with a dull thud of protesamit pie, th.se tm take the cn(tr of w the sage and hold it.