Abstract

Drama

A good deal of earnest work has obviously gone into the making of the play "Tight Britches." John Tainter Foote evidently studied his Smoky Mountains with the scientific eye of the professional folklorist and then, with the aid of his collaborator, Hubert Hayes, followed skillfully the accepted rules of good play-making. As a result, his tragic melodrama has about all the virtues possible to a piece from which the spark of genuine inspiration is lacking. The language is richly picturesque, the characters arc as convincing as study can make them, and the action is rather more compelling than one would expect in advance from what is, after all, only a very workman-like synthesis of pretty familiar situations. Thanks, in addition, to sound acting by the whole cast and to one performance on the part of Frank Camp which is rather more than that, the whole thing is convincing enough to deserve the success which it has at least a fair chance of achieving. Yet the fact remains that for all its useful virtues "Tight Britches" never lifts itself to the level of anything really memorable.