Abstract

Drama: a Problem

The theatrical production "Conscience" is very genuine drama of which the beginning gives not the slightest promise. When the curtain rises upon a lonely Alaskan hut swept by paper snow and reveals a very tiresome madman who summons ghosts from behind a black curtain that he may deliver to them vague harangues about the social system in general, the combination of melodramatic nonsense and intellectual pretentiousness suggests nothing so much as a feature film which has unfortunately learned to talk. Hardly less interesting than the problem which the play has wished to present is the problem which it unconsciously raises: How is it possible that a man capable of the telling realism of the two middle acts can burden them with a first scene which seems calculated to drive spectators from the theater and with a fourth which does as much as it can to destroy the effect of what has gone before?