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No Time for Comedy: Ethel
Barrymore Theatre,
April 17, 1939
New York Times,
April 18, 1939
Katharine Cornell Returns in S. N.
Behrman's Comedy About 'No Time for Comedy'
By BROOKS ATKINSON
"No Time for Comedy" is what S. N. Behrman calls
it in the title of the new play put on at the Ethel
Barrymore last evening. Since his signature is on
the manuscript, you need not believe too innocently
in titles. For "No Time for Comedy" is one of the
most thoroughly comic of the plays that have come
off his immaculately polished desk—sapient under the
surface, gay and glittering on top. Mr. Behrman has
reasoned himself into a sensible point of view and
written it with more craftsmanlike skill than he has
brought to any of his latter-day discursions. With
the collaboration of Guthrie McClintic, he has also
achieved a brilliant production. After two years of
silence in New York, which does not enjoy the quiet,
Katharine Cornell has returned in all her
magnificence, playing comedy with effortless skill
and personal sincerity. The cast is the most
spring-like event that a sullen April has borne this
season. "No Time for Comedy," the fourth of the
Playwrights' productions, is a dainty, amusing
delight.
* *
*
It is drawn in the shape of a triangle. A writer
of expert comedy, married to an actress who appears
in his plays, has fallen into the hands of a
meddlesome woman who specializes in bringing out the
latent possibilities of clever young men. She
persuades him that this is no time for comedy; she
purrs him into writing something about immortality
with a few topical echoes of the Spanish revolt. But
his wife is still in love with him, and sufficiently
realistic to distinguish between philandering and
profundity. All Mr. Behrman sets out to do, as a
writer of comedy, is to resolve the triangle into
the shape of the usual drawing-room conversation
with the usual turns of phrase and plot
circumlocutions.
* *
*
As it happens, he is the supreme stylist in this
medium. No dealer in wise-cracks, he writes
impeccable English with grace; he draws both the wit
and the humor out of his characters. Although he is
not urging a thesis in this play as earnestly as he
is fashioning a polite comedy, he is a man of
personal convictions, with an artistic integrity
that permeates all his thinking. And the notion that
a shoemaker should stick to his last is a sound one.
At least, it is sound for the playwright who is the
central character of the play, and who fetches up
paddling the shallows when he goes off the deep end.
Mr. Behrman knows how to write it with the most
charming sort of detachment. He writes like a
well-bred friend—personally sympathetic, yet tartly
critical when a decision has to be made.
* *
*
To Miss Cornell, all this pother in a drawing
room is the cream of an actress's jest. Excepting
for "Candida," she has been wearing the black
vestments so long that we hardly know how
beautifully she can manage the smartly colored
crocks of comedy. She can manage them superbly. She
is wholly at ease, thoroughly relaxed and admirably
human, and yet her acting glows with personal
sincerity. Although the grand themes are probably
the ones that stimulate her imagination most, she
does not impose on the worldly ones. She gives a
winning performance that makes friends for her and
the play.
Under Mr. McClintic's thorough direction, all the
actors play with more fullness and scope than you
discover in most performances. As the playwright,
Laurence Olivier, a most remarkable young actor,
knows how to play a part from the inside. He has a
hundred ways to express as an actor what the author
has put into the lines. Margalo Gillmore, as the
other woman, takes advantage of a generally talented
occasion to give the richest performance of her
career. John Williams plays an odd husband with good
taste as well as perfection, and Robert Flemyng
finds the drolleries in the part of a useful
bystander and makes them count. Gee Gee James is
whole-heartedly comic as a pert Negro maid.
Mr. Mielziner has poured unconscionable wealth into
the settings, giving them the sheen of comedy; and
Valentina has designed costumes that act before a
line is spoken. Taking the familiar staples of
drawing-room comedy, Mr. Behrman, Miss Cornell and
all their associates have endowed an evening with
comic distinction. The crackle of literary and
theatrical wit makes "No time for Comedy" an ironic
title.
No Time for Comedy: Ethel
Barrymore Theatre,
April 17, 1939 |
