Word: three-act
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...granting the excellence of these scenes, and the genuineness of the play's problem, the fact remains that either the problem could not be written into a three-act play or merely that Hart was incapable of doing so. Failing that, he has fallen back on the formula which made his "Lady in the Dark" such a success, the dream sequence. Thus with the aid of four (or is it five?) voyages into the tortured unconscious of Christopher Blake, Hart manages to pad out his play to the conventional length. Although they try mightily to be alternately charming and terrifying...
...Moscow's Satire Theater the curtain rose on a new three-act comedy entitled Mr. Perkins' Mission to the Land of the Bolsheviks, written by ex-Vice Commissar of Foreign Afiairs Alexander Korneichuk, a topflight Russian playwright...
What "Native Son" lacks most is unity. Substituting a large number of short scenes for the conventional three-act division may be novel, but it gives about the same impression as our Hero jerking across the screen in a 1910 movie. Even Canada Lee's powerful interpretation of Bigger Thomas, the Negro murderer about whose guilt the play tries to center, fails to draw it together. The authors may even have realized this, when they wrote the message that the play itself should have got across, into an over-emotional and over-long speech by the defendant's attorney...
...season has been nothing much to brag about. It has produced some very good entertainment, no good serious drama, much bad playwrighting. Last week the casualties were heavy. First, English Playwright J. B. Priestley went to the block for When We Are Married, a stale joke protracted into a three-act play. Next, Irish Playwright Paul Vincent Carroll, after distinguishing himself with Shadow and Substance and The White Steed, mounted the scaffold for Kindred, a turgid work neither poetic nor rational. Finally, U. S. Playwright Gustav Eckstein was garroted for Christmas Eve, a confused tale of family life featuring...
...Summer (by Samuel Nathaniel Behrman; Theatre Guild, producer). Like George Bernard Shaw, another regular contributor of wit & wisdom to the Theatre Guild, Playwright Behrman is no longer called upon to concoct a full-fledged drama every time he has assembled enough conversation for a three-act play. Therefore an informed playgoer seldom expects to find great vital issues being wrestled around a Behrman drawing room. What he does expect is a series of sage, civilized and exhaustive discussions on Problems of the Day. This he gets in full measure in End of Summer...