Word: plotting
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Made in America. An Armenian by birth and an American citizen by choice has written a play. His play is not so popularly concocted as the plays of his countryman, Mr. Arlen. In fact it is concocted so rudely as to seem an amateur product. The plot follows an Armenian boy from the family massacre in the old country to Ellis Island, through honest poverty and ultimate success. Made in America is said to be a kind of reverent memorial by its author (M. H. Gulesian) to his own life and liberty in this the promised land...
...Abbott is De Maupassantesque, thoroughly so, and one is tempted to say satisfactorily so. But the best story of this issue, despite the title "Her Daughter's Child," and despite the fact that it illustrates the undesirability of tacking bits of Mr. Arlen's style onto a Mrs. Freeman plot, is Donald Gibbs' story of Jane Fermier's grand-daughter who failed to arrive. The idea is worth a story and the characters decorating the idea are possessed of the breath of life. Mr. Gibbs has the good story-teller's instinct...
...melodrama of the coal mines. Its chief character is a lawless fellow whom eyerybody, including detectives hired to break a strike, was anxious to hang by the neck until he was dead. There is a murder charge against him toward the end to urge on the slightly lagging plot. There are revolvers, lovers and a ti'ial scene. Taken in one critical gulp they go down as only pretty good...
This success, after all, is certainly not inexplicable. Miss Nichols has written a play of racial conflicts, tied together by every stock device of the theatre, with lines embodying the best Irish-Jewish jokes of the past few--to be charitable--years. There is no element of surprise in plot or in situation, every entrance and every exit is perfectly obvious. There is nothing subtle in the entire piece, but Miss Nichols is not writing for a public that demands subtlety. She should not be reviled by the critics, for she has the true instinct of the showman...
...drop away with the bankroll in their jaws. He becomes a partner in their play, Her Lesson; sees it fail miserably at the first performance in Syracuse; buys it in a fit of anger; and makes it a wild success on Broadway. Coincidental possibly, is this plot; life, particularly theatrical life, is not like that. No one knows it better than Mr. Kaufman...