Word: behrmans
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...Pirate (by S. N. Behrman; produced by The Playwrights' Company & The Theater Guild) is the season's gayest bore. Everything conceivable has been done to make it seem that Playwright Behrman has really written a play. The sets are charming. The incidental music is lively. The costumes are gorgeous. Above all, Alfred Lunt & Lynn Fontanne-he at his most swashbuckling, she at her most mischievous-romp and cavort for all they are worth...
...working overtime, the Lunts manage to scrape off some Behrman rust. They also enliven the evening with a series of vaudeville acts. Actor Lunt dances, does magician's tricks, fakes tightrope walking. Actress Fontanne goes into a trance, does half a striptease. Two other characters indulge in a crap game. In view of all this, perhaps a decent script would be an intrusion...
Exactly what the style, type, and manner of "The Pirate" were meant to be, its three acts could not quite decide. For in his latest "extravaganza" S. N. Behrman has put together an incongruous conglomeration of purposes and a complete lack of originality which even occasionally witty repartee, lavish production, and the adequate acting of Lunt and Fontanne cannot rescue...
...from there on everyone, especially the author, seems confused. Is it a comedy of manners, a bedroom farce, a philosophic romance, or a static vaudeville show? Unfortunately, it winds up with what looks too much like a prolonged curtain call. The dialogue, on which most of S. N. Behrman's plays depend, is laborious in its humor, forced in its numerous modern references, and "stuck in" like the book of a musical comedy. Songs and dances, stereotyped operetta characters, a gaudily colored scene, and some extraneous fill-in material complete this similarity with a musical...
...scenery and costumes of nineteenth century West Indies. Several imaginative mechanical devices, along with the panorama of color, attempt to liven up the pace. But color cannot move a stationary figure, nor brighten a static line. Bravura in production must have support in the script, and Mr. Behrman has let everyone down...