The Theatre

A play in three acts and seven scenes, by Ronald Gow. Settings by Cirker & Robbins; staged and produced by George Abbott. At the Ethel Barry-more Theatre.

JOHN BROWN

Mr. George Abbott, who so successfully produced “Twentieth Century” and other plays, turned both actor and producer the other night and presented “John Brown” to a hopeful audience at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.

As the title indicates this is an historical play based on the more exciting episodes in the life of that simple-minded fanatical pre-Civil war character whose overpowering desire to attend personally to the freeing of the slaves became a cause celebré”. Not only did Brown’s unsuccessful venture strike a responsive note in the minds of the more romantic citizens of the times but it also has been a constant source of material for authors ever since. Just last year Leonard Erlich made his first bid for literary eminence by writing a novel on the subject called “God’s Angry Man”. A few seasons back Stephen Vincent Benet wrote his best selling narrative poem, “John Brown’s Body”, and some years ago Oswald Garrison Villard wrote his now famous biography of the great Abolitionist. Even Englishmen have been attracted to John Brown as copy. Shaw has more than once threatened to do a play about him and the prolific John Drinkwater once made a similar threat.

The present version has been done by an Englishman, a Mr. Ronald Gow whose piece shows old John and his sons getting ready to launch their famous fiasco at Harper’s Ferry. In a series of seven scenes you are taken over the various incidents of Brown’s adventure which culminates with his capture and questioning at the hands of Robert E. Lee, who was then a colonel in the United States Army.

Despite the fact that the author has been able to pick and choose his scenes in portraying the life of John Brown the audience sat quietly through it all. There was a thick pedantic air over the whole proceedings. The color, clamor, rich movements of the story are hopelessly lost in lines that sound as though they came out of some school book. George Abbott as John Brown is, to be kind, inadequate. He plays the role of this self-made martyr with an indifference and quietness that borders on coolness. Never does he reach the stature of a robust, inspired character. If ever a play needed an “emotional” actor of the Barrymore or Bennett type, it is “John Brown”. The rest of the cast were better equipped.

The only chance “John Brown” has of being a box-office successlies in the producer’s ability to inveigle the grammar and high school students of the city into the theatre for a history lesson. They should like it. A great deal of it reminds me of something the school dra-