GIGANTIC PLAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 230, 17 December 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

GIGANTIC PLAY

Work of Author of “Jew Suss** UGLY WOMAN AS HEROINE A new play by Lion Feuchtwanger, the author of that astonishing novel, “Jew Suss” was produced at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus, Hamburg, recently. It is called “The Petroleum Islands,” and is based on Feuchtwanger’s recent novel, “The Hideous Duchess Margarets Maultasch”—based on it in a peculiar sense, for, as the author explained in a review article, he regarded the novel, with all its scrupulous painting of chronological and topical detail, as a preliminary clearing of the ground for the play. Both novel and play depict the battle of a strong and gifted woman against her extreme physical ugliness, but whereas the Duchess lived in Tirol in the 14th century, Deborah Gray, her modern counterpart, is placed on an imaginary island, very like America j only more so, while around her "jazzes” what the disgusted preacher referred to as “this so-called 20th century.” She is president of the Petroleum Islands Company, a world-wide concern, and her principal struggles, emotional and financial, centre in an American Jewish agent of the Soviet Government, who is asking too high a price for an oil concession. She is also opposed by a young woman possessing all the physical advantages that Deborah Gray lacks, and none of the forceful qualities of which Deborah Gray is the embodiment. Through 16 scenes we are shown the emotional torments, the ruthlessness, and the financial triumph of a woman with a powerful brain and a face like an ape’s, enacted to the derisive lilt of a ragtime song, chanted by a chorus of morons in sporting kit, who accompany the attractive young woman and dance the Charleston. Each scene is pi'eceded by a subtitle, more or less explanatory, which is flashed on to the curtain, and at the beginning of the second act 20 lines of exhortation to pay serious attention to the piece are similarly displayed. The 16 scenes show a tendency to fall apart and so fail to achieve a cumulative effect. The trouble seems to be that this succession of a large number of scenes (a form of presentation which seems to be increasing in popularity) necessarily lays stress on the “time element” in the play, but, as time is not an essential factor in this case, the treatment has the effect only of tearing the play to pieces.