The Theatre

(The Chicago Little Theatre)

Idon’t want to write aboutRosmersholmor about Ibsen now. I want to write about Mme. Borgny Hammer, who is great in the manner of the great Norwegians.

There is a lot of talk about the Russian soul just at present. I wish the Norwegian soul might come in for its share of analysis and appreciation. It is interesting not because of its dark shudderings but because of its intense light and its clearness. It is like the sun; it is like wild flowers—not the delicate but the hardy ones.

Mme. Hammer is this sort of person. She is an actress because she must act or die. She is so intense that the air about her is always “charged”; and she is so natural and simple that you know right away she must be great. There wasn’t a particle of difference between her presence on the stage as the Ibsen heroine and her manner when she meets you on Michigan Avenue and stops to say that Ibsen is so wonderful it’s impossible to cut a line ofhis dialogue. In both situations she is the genius. Mrs. Fiske’s Rebecca West was a stunningly-worked-out idea; Mme. Hammer’s was just—Rebecca West. Mrs. Fiske had a theory of the character and presented it in a series of subtle and powerful designs. But what did this wonderful woman do? She didn’t act Rebecca West at all: she just gave you the impression that she is Rebecca every day of her life. She madeRosmersholma natural scene in the life of some modern family, instead of making it a “study”—an effect in a rather strained psychology.

I wish I could describe Mme. Hammer’s stage conversations—especially the parts where she listens. She is so busy feeling Rebecca West that she has no time to waste in managing her eyes and voice and hands. They take care of themselves just as they would in her own library. When our best actresses “listen” they keep their eyes on the person who is talking with the kind of look that says: “I know it would be bad art now to look at the audience out of the tail of my eye. I must pay close attention to what this actor is saying to me.” Mme. Hammer looks at Rosmer with the same expression she would wear if he were about to say things she hadn’t heard him rehearse every day for six weeks. If she should break out with some dialogue of her own it couldn’t sound any more spontaneous than her reading of the lines Ibsen gave to Rebecca. I know Rebecca’s lines, and yet I forgot them and decided she must be making things up as she went along. What richness of simplicity, and what a sturdy beauty!

I have never seen an actress who cares less about herself than Mme. Hammer and cares so deeply for the character she is presenting. The expressions of her face are marvelous.... She said to me once that she disagreed with critics who thought HeddaGabler had nothing to give. “She had so much, so very much to give,” she said passionately. No wonder she thinks so: she is a big woman who herself has an infinity of things to give.

M. C. A.

Of the production ofThe Trojan Womenof Euripides by The Little Theatre Company, at the Blackstone Theatre, Sunday, April 11th, one might waste many, many words and much good space. One might make merry over the quaint little mannikins trying their hardest to look like Spartan soldiers. Or again, a whole column might be devoted to the insipid posturings of the saintly-pretty lady who played Helen. Much sarcasm might be expended on the flops done, in the approved French-tragedy style, by the lady who played Andromache. A whole thesis might be written by an enterprising student at some correspondence school on the use of the Vaudeville Spotlight in Classic Greek Tragedy. And Hamlet’s advice to the players might be quoted with some profit to a few of the company: pointed emphasisat the “do notmouthyour words” part of the advice, to the lady who speaks the speech beginning:

Lo, yonder ships: I ne’er set foot on one,But tales and pictures tell, when over themBreaketh a storm not all too strong to stem,Each man strives hard, the tiller gripped, the mastManned, the hull baled, to face it, till at lastToo strong breaks the o’erwhelming sea: lo, thenThey cease, and yield them up as broken menTo fate and the wild waters.

Lo, yonder ships: I ne’er set foot on one,

But tales and pictures tell, when over them

Breaketh a storm not all too strong to stem,

Each man strives hard, the tiller gripped, the mast

Manned, the hull baled, to face it, till at last

Too strong breaks the o’erwhelming sea: lo, then

They cease, and yield them up as broken men

To fate and the wild waters.

And last of all one might say unkind things about the blending of the voices in the chorus.

All the above points, however, I know are very debatable. There are two that cannot be debated. Two that outbalance by far all the other defects of the production.

If all the cast had voices like corncrakes, and used them after the manner of country-town amateurs, the production would still be worth seeing for the thrilling pictures of colour and line presented by individuals and the ensemble. And rising, soaring away above all the petty little defects is the wonderful, majestical verse of Euripides. What could be more beautiful than the lyric:

Even as the sound of a songLeft by the way, but longRemembered, a tune of tearsFalling where no man hears,In the old house as rain,For things loved of yore:But the dead hath lost his painAnd weeps no more.

Even as the sound of a song

Left by the way, but long

Remembered, a tune of tears

Falling where no man hears,

In the old house as rain,

For things loved of yore:

But the dead hath lost his pain

And weeps no more.

It is greatly to be regretted that it has been thought fit to cut that lyric, Cassandra’s Hymn to Hymen, and many of the other beautiful parts of the play.

The whole thing might have been better in a hundred ways—then again it might have been worse in ten hundred ways. Let us be glad that we had an opportunity of seeing the wonderful thing, even though the Carnegie Peace Foundation is backing it up.

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