"The Enemy" Great Play
By A. L. S. WOOD.
In "The Enemy," which I saw in New Haven, Wednesday evening, Channing Pollock has written a great play. The word "great" is used advisedly. Pollock has come to a deft dramatic economy, a ruthlessness and a disregard of theatric compromise that put him in the fore rank of present-day dramatists. In "The Enemy" is apparent the same high intent that was discoverable in "The Fool," but in the later play Mr. Pollock has more closely approximated his aspiration. "The Enemy" is infinitely the better play.
Inevitably "The Enemy," when it is presented to a metropolitan audience next fall, will cause discussion. It is to be expected that it will be attacked. Superheated patriots will see in the transference of wartime problems from the people of the Allies to a household in Austria an attempt at justification of the Central Powers. But Mr. Pollock's interest in humanity is so genuine and the terms in which he expresses it are so evidently truth that the attacks will spend themselves. It is likely, the evident truth of "The Enemy" and its starkness will overshadow the confessed fact that the author wrote it as a preachment. I expect as a result of the production of "The Enemy" an acknowledgement of the gifts of Mr. Pollock as a dramatist by persons who have withheld such recognition. There are commentators and many of them who condemned "The Fool" for the author's choice of materials. These materials of the theater are in disrepute because they generally have been used for results that would bring them into disrepute. It is shortsighted criticism not to realize that Mr. Pollock's choice for a modern setting of the Christ-life was just. The original version in the Gospels is not without its melodrama. Many of the stories of that version depended for effectiveness on a miracle.
There will be no occasion for critics to discuss methods when "The Enemy" is shown. Mr. Pollock has chosen to work the warp and woof of his story on the loom of tragedy. "Nice, ordinary little people" are overwhelmed by circumstance. In the wonderfully well contrived dialog of the opening act there are undertones of doom, tones that rumble beneath a surface of happiness. It is a story of the war and the scene is Vienna. The first of the shadows is cast by the news of the assassination of a Grand Duke somewhere in Serbia. It is inconsequential news to the people of the play, but to the superior beings in the audience, endowed by the conventions of the theater, with omniscience, it is the uplifted finger of Fate reaching almost to the sun and casting a black shadow in which the nice, ordinary little people must writhe for four years of war agony and plod for perhaps decades of following peace. It is deft playwriting that produces the early effects of the play. To deepen the shadow Mr. Pollock has contrived a device as effective and awe-inspiring as the knocking at the gate in "Macbeth." The boy and girl are congratulating themselves that the danger of conscription has passed when through a slot in the door slips the long blue envelope they have been dreading. The war is no more a glorious thing, heard from a long way off; it has entered that home and everyone knows it will never leave it until it has had its will of it.
With pessimistic ruthlessness and deft economy of word and situation Mr. Pollock continues through almost four acts to show the absurdity of war, its waste, its futility. Humanity isn't well bespoke. The potency of hatred -- "The Enemy" -- is demonstrated and its catchwords are the dialog of the characters. One is ashamed to hear the Austrians of the play using the commonplaces of American propaganda and being convinced by them. One dislikes to remember how those absurdities of expression affected one's emotions during the war and had their way, no matter how loudly intellect demanded the use of common sense. At the end of the last act the audience is almost demanding, as the characters are demanding, an explanation for all this futility. The professor, a part that is to be a great opportunity for some player gives it. His speeches must necessarily be long. That they were required is shown by the behavior of the New Haven audience on the hottest of June nights. At the final curtain the members of that audience sat and applauded. Eight times the curtain went up and down again before anyone reached for a hat.
The universality of "The Enemy" is apparent. It is a war play without a battle scene, without a shot. It is pessimistic comment, for the drums of the rising generation are heard through one of its later scenes. It is hopeful comment for one man at least has discovered and said that men fight not against men of another nation, but against a common enemy -- hatred. All this is to be tested in a curious way. Reinhardt will produce the play in the Stadt Theater, Vienna. No changes will be made except the scene of the play will be London.
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