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Serena Blandish: Morosco
Theatre,
January 23, 1929
New York Times, January 24, 1929
The Play: Difficulties of Getting
Married.
By J. BROOKS ATKINSON
If acting were the sum and substance of drama,
the enigmatic case of "Serena Blandish," which was
tried at the Morosco last evening, might be easily
decided. Perhaps acting is. For certainly it seems
sufficient when Ruth Gordon adorns the stage as the
pathetically expectant Serena whose finest instincts
ultimately get the better of her in a diabolical
demi-world. Whatever "Serena Blandish" may have been
when it appeared as a satiric novel by "A Lady of
Quality" nearly four years ago, it inevitably
becomes a finespun study of character in Miss
Gordon's orchidaceous acting. This Serena is
detached in no casual sense. All the world of lords
and ladies and impostors envelopes her without
touching her, so well does Miss Gordon pick her out
of rudimentary impersonation and transform her into
tremulous character. It is lovely, dainty, fragile
acting, rare to see, soothing to feel across the
footlights. Surrounded with splendid acting in
several of the other roles—by Constance Collier, A.
E. Matthews, Clarence Derwent, Henry Daniell—set in
a lustrous production, this Serena is doubtless for
the gourmets who can enjoy good acting apart from an
elusive play.
In dramatizing this novel by a Lady Jones of
Quality, S. N. Behrman, whose quality has already
been tasted in "The Second Man," lacks audacity,
like Serena herself. Lacking audacity Serena, who
finds getting married so difficult, concludes merely
by winning the man of her heart on his own
ungenerous terms. She has had a fling at Lord Ivor
Cream, the apathetic, insufferable moneybags of the
Albany. She has had an honorable proposal from
Sigmund Traub, the affluent jeweler of Bond Street.
Alas, Serena lacks audacity. So she joins forces
with that parasitic Edgar Malleson and starts off
for Monte Carlo to open a night club—unhallowed by
the church, unsustained by solid society. There is
only the ecstasy of her heart to prove that she has
made no genuine mistake.
Lacking audacity in his way, too, Mr. Behrman has
written an insecure play, thin at times to the point
of transparence, too frail surely for the tumult of
Broadway. Yet, like Serena, he gains a sort of
Pyrrhic victory. For as Serena makes her nervous
progress from a fashionable restaurant to the
brilliant drawing room of Countess Flor di Folio,
always absurdly in quest of a husband, sitting wrapt
with expectancy in the Countess's limousine,
chattering with a stranger on top a bus—the
suspicion grows that perhaps Mr. Behrman's lack of
audacity has been in good stead and has permitted
him to rarefy his cryptic story into exquisite
fantasy.
You must know, then, that men like Serena without
taking her seriously. As the philosophical butler
tells her, she has not the instinct of success.
When, by sudden magic, the juggernaut Countess
adopts her and trains her in the art of snaring
husbands, her prospects brighten. She meets the
grand world. She lunches with the greatest catch in
London in his private apartments. But her quest of a
husband is false to her nature, as she knows in her
heart. That is why she decides to roll off to Monte
Carlo with a mossless, bounding stone and the man
she honestly loves.
Mr. Behrman reduces his story to the tiniest thread
of episodic narrative, wording it in dialogue that
is frequently dull, though often resilient.
Sometimes he turns a pretty phrase and introduces a
dry generality. Aware, no doubt, of the perils of so
insubstantial a story, Jed Harris, as the producer,
has kept waltz music playing almost continuously in
the background, and once or twice he sends an exotic
bird across the stage, carried magnificently by a
punctilious butler. Robert Edmond Jones has kept the
background unreal by designing buoyant settings,
lighting them well, and contriving the bus top and
the interior of the limousine as flecks of soft
light plucked out of foggy space.
Like the play, the acting is subdued. Miss Collier
introduces as contrast flurries of delightful farce
animation as the sweeping, confident countess. But
Mr. Derwent is nicely forbearing as the jeweler, Mr.
Daniell is unbelievably languid as the
over-civilized, pampered lord, and Mr. Matthews is
as sardonically restrained as usual in the part of
the butler. Hugh Sinclair makes an agreeably
impulsive Edgar Malleson.
So the acting and the production catch the uncertain
flashes of effulgence in Mr. Behrman's script.
However much that achievement may fall short of an
evening's entertainment, it discloses Miss Gordon as
an enchanting actress and it engenders moments of
the rarest beauty.
Serena Blandish: Morosco
Theatre,
January 23, 1929 |
