Great War Play

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 335, 21 April 1928, Page 22

Great War Play

‘The Unknown Warrior ’ Translated from French REMARKABLE . STAGE STUDIES An English version called "The Unknown Warrior,” by Cecil Lewis of Paul Raynal’s “Le Tombeau Sous l’Arc de Triomphe,” has been performed at the Arts Theatre, London, and has been the occasion of much diverse discussion, some even going so far as to declare it to be a great work of art. Somewhere in the autumn of 1915 a French soldier comes home on short leave to a chateau in the country. His father is awaiting him there, and the girl to whom he is betrothed. The encounter of these three is a Remarkable study remarkable not only in the accuracy and sympathy of its drawing of individual character, but in its power to raise the soldier to a representative significance. His hungry joy in the thought that he has four days "of liberty from the trenches, his determination to consider those days as an eternity and to forget that they must end, his supreme delight in the company of the girl whom that evening he is to marry, his reserved and bitter realisation that his old father, for all his anxiety and apparent distress, is subconsciously enjoying the renewed importance that war and the absence of the young men have given to his old age—all these aspects of the soldier are clearly seen, and seen not merely as aspects of one man, but as aspects of a general truth. It is simple, beautiful and poignant, and when a telegram of recall shortens the four days to a few hours the poignancy is increased and the curious "stoicism of the man—so different from romantic heroism —appears as a thing’ at once terrible and glorious. The wedding is cancelled, for there is no time for a public ceremony; but, left alone together, the two lovers make their own vows and call each other man and wife. It is a love scene of extraordinary power, sanctified and strengthened by the tragedy of its occasion. The next scene is before dawn in the girl's bedroom where she and the soldier have slept together. He has told her that the French advance in Champagne has been successful and that the war will soon end. At first she believed it; now, feeling that he is concealing something from her, she begs for the truth. He tells her the truth —the war must continue tor years. One confession lead 3 to another, and she tells him, what she has hitherto most elaborately concealed, that her love for him is dead. For his sake and because she was ashamed of the irresolution of her character she had given herself to him, believing that, if the war soon ended, she might recover in his comapny the power to love which she had lost in his absence. Now that the war is not to end, she confesses the truth. To the soldier this is the supreme bitterness and agony; in it, all his suffering is epitomised. So that he might obtain this leave and see her at a time when all leave from the front was stopped, he had volunteeered to perform a special duty so perilous that his death ■was certain. He had accepted death for the sake of a few hours of her love; now he knows that even her love has deserted him. Fred Francis, now with the JWuriel Starr Company, is making arrangements to revisit New- Zealand and give Shakespearean recitals at the schools. He did this before when with Guy Bates Post.

Harry Weber, who was responsible for bringing most of the movie stars into vaudeville in America, says that the following cinema performers are ready for the two-or-more-a-day and on the look-out for sketches in which to exhibit themselves: Viola Dana, Ben Turpin, George Sidney, Lois Wilson, Mrs. Reginald Denny, Irene Rich. Lya De Putti. Theda Bara, Conway Tearle and Claire Windsor.