Word: abely
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Such a run on the history books is abnormal. For, despite the theatre's love of dressing up, historical plays are notoriously bad box office. But if the success of such plays as Oscar Wilde and Abe Lincoln in Illinois is due to competent writing and first-rate acting, the vogue for historical plays in general is really a commentary on the times. With war, fascism, strikes, depressions bearing down on all sides, playwrights and audiences alike tend to be confused, disturbed, jittery, and plays laid in the settled past offer a ready form of escape...
Some historical plays, to be sure, are made of sterner stuff and use the past for what it can say to the present. In Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Playwright Sherwood beats the drum for liberal democracy; in Knickerbocker Holiday, the author of High Tor gives comfort to high Tories...
...Abe Lincoln in Illinois (by Robert E. Sherwood; produced by the Playwrights' Company). First production of the five playwrights (Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrman, Sidney Howard, Elmer Rice, Robert E. Sherwood) who last season decided to form an independent producing unit, Abe Lincoln in Illinois should see them triumphantly launched. An episodic story of Lincoln from his early Ann Rutledge days to his election as President, it once more demonstrates the magic of the Great Emancipator's personality...
Sherwood does not indulge in any awkward sermonizing. Instead, he quotes from Lincoln's own vibrant speeches, particularly the famed "House Divided" one, and lets their message carry forward into the present. Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a frequently inexpert play, slow in getting started, discontinuous in structure, too literary in some of its writing, too emotional in some of its appeal. But it is also a fervent play, burning fiercely with the spirit of what Lincoln, rightly or wrongly, has come to stand for in the hearts of his countrymen...
...Russian-born Cleveland oilman and war veteran put in a long distance call for Japanese Ambassador Saito in Washington, got him on the line, pleaded with him to keep the peace, was assured there would be no Japanese-Russian war. Since then Cleveland's Abraham ("Abe") Pickus has been busy telephoning world diplomats, dictators and statesmen in a vigorous one-man campaign to bring about international amity. Although Chamberlain, Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito of Japan and many another bigwig refused to talk, Veteran Pickus once was put through to Spain's Franco, another time to Hitler, whom he promptly...