THE PRESS

HOW YOUR MONEY HELPS

The varied phases of an organization like the Albany Community Chest are services that are difficult to illustrate in any vivid way to the public that supports the philanthropy, and much of its praise must needs go unsung, if not unhonored.

Twenty-five per cent of the funds collected for the Chest are devoted to extending and supporting social service that acts as a sort of human adjuster in homes where things greatly need adjusting. The Chest can claim a friend; one that is not directly propaganda for its work, in the playlet, “The Undercurrent,” that is being acted at Proctor’s Grand. It is the work of Miss Fay Ehlert of Chicago and reveals the value of a woman social service worker in entering a squalid home where the father’s domineering and brutalizing mind is driving his young daughter from the home to possible disaster away from it. In fact, she is accused of theft, and it is the understanding and sympathy of this social worker that saves the girl. She tells a brave falsehood as to the girl’s previous whereabouts and saves her thus from the wrath of the father. Then she takes the girl with her to make the untruth come true in a finer and more wholesome atmosphere for the girl.

Probably Miss Ehlert has seen some such incident in service work in Chicago. One could find it in any city and it is this unofficial court of domestic relations that the Albany Community Chest partially supports in its work of helping to make better citizens or to save normally good citizens from demoralizing trends.

“The Undercurrent” is a forceful and convincing illustration of the good your money does when it is given to the Community Chest.

—Editorial in The Knickerbocker Press, Albany, N. Y., April 9, 1929.

THE THEATRE AND SOCIAL SERVICE

In every city and town nowadays there is a social service organization, or a group of unselfish citizens—usually women—devoted to the betterment of home life among the poor, the ignorant and even lawless families. It is work that requires infinite tact, patience and sympathy with the sorrows and trials of unfortunate and unhappy families. In the great cities the social service workers are often endowed organizations. In small communities they depend upon the occasional and voluntary donations of prosperous neighbors. The very confidential nature of the quiet ministrations of the social service worker prevents the exploitation of their achievements or the publication of their daily and nightly tasks in detail.

Many generous givers to this priceless cause may not realize how their money is applied, how it helps not only the poor but also misguided families in which cruelty, domestic misunderstanding and deceit are making for the disruption of what should be happy homes.

There is now touring the R-K-O vaudeville circuit, a one-act play called “The Undercurrent,” which not only throws the searchlight of truth upon the motives and deeds of the social service worker, but incidentally illustrates how the theatre may exert a helpful influence towards the extension and understanding of non-sectarian social service.

This little play, written by Mrs. Fay Ehlert, wife of the Chilean Consul in Chicago, and herself a social service worker, has been one of the popular successes of major vaudeville in every theatre where it has been presented. It is neither propaganda nor preachment, standing bravely upon its own feet as a tense, tender and convincing record of unhappy family life into which a wise and womanly social service friend is able to bring peace and a large measure of happiness. The phenomenal popular success of this dramatic sketch should impress practical theatrical producers that they can exercise a powerful (and profitable) hand in helping to save normally good citizens from demoralizing trends by presenting true and compelling plays or sketches which demonstrate with dramatic fidelity such incidents of life and service as those depicted in “The Undercurrent.”

Such a play, absorbing and timely in interest, not only designates the special humanitarian deeds of such workers in social service, but also informs the pleased audience how the money spent by the public in such channels helps the unhappy without betraying confidences and without boastful stories in the newspapers.

—Floyd B. Scott in The Magazine of Vaudeville, April 21, 1929.

A THEATRICAL VENTURE

For some years American theatrical managers have defended their choice of programs by pleading that they must give the public what it wants. Their critics have replied that the managers have signally failed to understand the public taste. They have backed up this assertion by pointing to the astonishing growth in recent years of the Little Theatre movement.

The amateur theatre is to-day not only holding its own against the professional stage—it has actually begun to invade it. For evidence of this one has only to cite the one-act play, “The Undercurrent,” by Fay Ehlert, which heads the bill this week at the Orpheum Theatre.

“The Undercurrent,” it may be recalled, was this year’s prize-winning play of the Chicago Little Theatre tournament....

Arrangements were made under which the original cast should tour with “The Undercurrent” during the summer recess. No attempt was to be made to professionalize the production. All its fine amateur quality with its refreshing freedom from conventionalized forms was to be retained....

What the venture may mean to the cause of good drama can be easily foreseen. It will enlarge the scope and value of the Little Theatre movement everywhere, and encourage the writing and presenting of more and better dramatic sketches. It will cultivate and improve the public taste and re-create public interest in the drama. And it will bring some fine new blood into the acting profession.

—Editorial in The Winnipeg Tribune, Friday, August 24, 1928.

R-K-O WATCHING LITTLE THEATRE MOVEMENT

President Brown of Radio-Keith-Orpheum Sends Scouts to Review and Secure Best Playlet

Hiram S. Brown, president of the Radio-Keith-Orpheum Vaudeville Circuit, in order to encourage and acquire good short plays, dramatic sketches and worthy one-act playlets, has advised local representatives to review the tournaments and independent reproductions of the Little Theatre movements, throughout the country. The immediate and continued success of “The Undercurrent,” the prize-winner of the Chicago Little Theatre tournament—now touring the R-K-O Circuit, has been so marked that Mr. Brown and George A. Godfrey, chief of the booking department, have determined to continue a plan of “prospecting” and developing other products of the Little Theatre.

“The Undercurrent,” after months of brilliant success, starting in the R-K-O houses of Chicago, came East to further emphasize the fact that vaudeville patrons are eager for this sort of innovation in their favorite form of amusement. It played Keith’s Palace a short while ago, and at the B. F. Keith Memorial Theatre, Boston, last week, this short play became an immediate success with the Boston vaudeville public.

A leading editorial (not a dramatic review) in the Boston Post says of it:

“It is neither sensational nor flamboyant, but a burning human drama, twenty minutes of thrilling suspense with a touching climax. There is real hope for the legitimate drama when a vaudeville house makes a play like this one a feature on the bill.”

The original cast of “The Undercurrent” was made up of talented amateurs, but its merits were obvious and proved to be exactly to the tastes and preferences of every Vaudeville audience which has witnessed it.

Radio-Keith-Orpheum now is “hot on the trail” of more dramatic one-acters of like quality.

—The Magazine of Vaudeville, Palace Theatre, New York City, March 31, 1929.

IN A VAUDEVILLE PROGRAM

One doesn’t expect to find a sermon in a vaudeville program. Yet one of the most powerful sermons ever presented in Cheyenne was a feature of the program of the Lincoln theater Thursday evening. It was Fay Ehlert’s playlette, “The Undercurrent.” Too bad that every parent in Cheyenne could not have seen that tabloid drama. To have done so would have been wholesome for some, perhaps for many. The observation may be validly applied in virtually every community of more than a few families.

“The Undercurrent” is repulsive. It is brutal. It rasps the sensibilities. It emphasizes excrutiatingly the significance of the phrase “the truth hurts.” The hurting, however, the repulsiveness, the brutality, are wholesome in effect.

The little drama, the whole course of which is run in less time than is required for presentation of one act of an ordinary play, deals with a self-centered parent’s inability to understand that conceptions of parental responsibility and authority which were forced on him in his youth are incongruous and impossible in another environment and another period. The effects of his blind wrath, which he regards as righteous, make the observer shudder.

The little play’s worth lies in that there is in many, many homes, some taint of the immorally “moral” atmosphere which blighted the home which the drama depicts. Generally, happily, this taint is slight, but it is, nevertheless, a thing that may have dreadful consequences. To have the fact called to attention is good for the soul.

Mrs. Ehlert’s little masterpiece undoubtedly has sweetened the atmosphere of many a home.

—Editorial in Wyoming State Tribune, October 26, 1928.

HOPE FOR THE THEATRE

The work which the “Little Theatres” of the country are doing can best be judged by the prize-winning play of the Chicago Little Theatre Tournament, which is on the bill at Keith’s Memorial Theatre this week. This play, “The Undercurrent,” written by Fay Ehlert, has had a remarkable success.

It is neither sensational nor flamboyant, but a burning human drama, 20 minutes of thrilling suspense with a touching climax. There is a real hope for the legitimate drama when a vaudeville house makes a play like this one a feature of the bill.

—Editorial in The Boston Post, Monday, March 25, 1929.

WHAT ONE WOMAN DID

When Mrs. Fay Ehlert brought “The Undercurrent” to Broadway a few weeks ago, she proved that she had the courage of her convictions. So also did the bookers—for playlets had not been in such good standing in major vaudeville. In fact, there had been evinced a general disinclination to book playlets of any kind, with special reference, of course, to those of a serious nature. However, the critics upon reviewing “The Undercurrent” during its run at the New York Palace were so enthusiastic that there no longer was any doubt as to the way in which this particular play in little was regarded by the critical fraternity and by those who do not always agree with it—that is, our theatregoers. The bookers also showed what they thought of the whole proceeding by freely routing the playlet into the larger houses of the East.

What particularly interested dramatic authors, however, was the fact that “The Undercurrent” brought back, in some degree at least, the vogue of the playlet, although, of course in the final analysis, the quality of the dramalets presented by other writers must be the deciding element in the decision as to the future of the playlet in vaudeville. At any rate, the clever Mrs. Ehlert must be given credit for having written a serious, one might almost say, sombre playlet so filled with the various essentials of living and with characterizations so skillfully and effectively drawn that she has turned the eyes of the critical in the direction of a form of entertainment which had so long been unhonored and unsung, and which seems at last to be coming into its own again. In other words, it does not really seem to be a question of whether the public wants serious playlets but of whether other scripts can be found that contain the elements of humanity and the struggle against the fates as shown so effectively and sympathetically in “The Undercurrent.”

Fay Ehlert may be regarded somewhat as a female Christopher Columbus, who has charted new seas and sailed into port with colors flying.

—Editorial in The Vaudeville News and New York Star, March 16, 1929.

“THE UNDERCURRENT”

Thousands who saw and heard “The Undercurrent” at the Orpheum last week were given an unforgettable lesson. Thousands more might hear it to better advantage as time goes along and the country and society generally would be better for it. In brief, a tyrannical father brow-beating wife and children with rules of conduct even down to terrorism over the most trivial incidents, substituted fear for love in the hearts in the home circle. “Bring up a child in the way he should go” was his axiom which he enforced with the big stick. The result was what might be expected where the sublime note of the Nazarene, “Love one another,” was forgotten. A social worker checking up a wayward child uncovered the misery of wife and children and rescued the girl.

We don’t know how far such rigidity in loveless homes extends. It does not seem possible that father or mother could exert such tyranny. But there is no question that the attitude which this sketch so powerfully portrays is a serious factor in the making of society as it is to-day. Suppression by force creates the situation that leads to an explosion with disastrous results. This was the case not many years ago with the Romanoff dynasty of Russia; it is the inevitable result in the nation, the state and in the home. We do not doubt that dregs in the social scale too often result from blind, unintelligent, inhuman tyranny in the home. The Teacher of Nazareth certainly reminded the world of that when he said of the commandments, “The greatest of these is love.”

—Editorial in Evening World Herald, Omaha, Neb., November 12, 1928.

THE AMATEUR ARRIVES

At what stage in its development the tribe began to seek means of collectively expressing itself must be left to the author of the “Golden Bough” to determine. Rudyard Kipling, however, having made some slight study of the organization of the Solutreans, arrived at the conclusion that the modes adopted about the time the glacial ice began to retreat from France and Great Britain were numerous and altogether sound. “There are nine-and-sixty ways of composing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right,” he observes.

To-day the tribe still has its lays, but it calls them one-act plays by amateurs. They are just as authentic as the lays of the Solutreans, but the professional producer labors under the obsession that, whether there are sixty-nine ways, or more, or less, of writing them, every single one of them is wrong from the standpoint of the regular theatre. The professional producer has a formula the substance of which is that a play, to succeed, must be written to what is understood to be the order of the audience. Certain things that will “get across” must be put into it; certain others must be carefully excluded. So audiences listen year after year to standardized productions, interspersed at rare intervals by the works of the few men of genius who are strong enough to make their own rules....

The amateur, therefore, is driven to the Little Theatre and this at once effectually damns him in the eyes of professional producer and professional critic alike. As a famous Chicago critic wrote, nothing that is any good can come out of the Little Theatre, and it rather increases its handicap if a playlet wins a prize in a Little Theatre contest.

The impossible, however, has happened. A Little Theatre play has not only won acceptance on the Orpheum Circuit but has become the head-liner. The play is “The Undercurrent,” and it is astonishingly outside the limits of the formula mentioned above. The author, Mrs. Fay Ehlert, owes her first chance to enter the field in competition with the “regulars” to the chairman of the circuit....

He was willing to try anything once, so he had it put on at a Sunday matinée in Chicago, before the hardest possible audience. It was not even set down on the bill for that first try-out. It was not only at the disadvantage of being the curtain-raiser, but it was acted by amateurs, students and professors of the Northwestern University, who, unaccustomed to the auditorium, spoke in tones too low. Furthermore, it was a “sad” play. In short, every element was present that seemed from the beginning to preclude success....

But it succeeded as only one play in years succeeds. The hard-faced men who attend Sunday afternoon performances in Chicago sat silent for a moment when the curtain fell and then broke into tremendous applause, giving the first of the series of repeated curtain-calls that was to mark the subsequent progress of “The Undercurrent” on the Orpheum Circuit. Localized as the action is in a city of the United States, and limited in time almost to the moment, the playlet, nevertheless, contains elements of universality that have made it as acceptable in Canada as across the border. It was presented for the first time in Vancouver on Monday at the Orpheum and is on the bill for the rest of the week.

Criticism of the play as a play appears in another column of The Morning Star. Suffice it to say here, that whatever its strictly dramatic value, it demonstrates that the tribal lay is rightly written when it is so written as to tell the tribal story, and without any design of effecting specific reactions among its auditors.

In other words, if the play, whether a one-act playlet or a drama in three acts, truly interprets the tragedy and comedy of life, the reactions will take care of themselves, the climaxes will come in their natural places, and instead of a machine-made production, trim and neat, a living thing will appear which its very excresences and awkwardnesses will only make more vital.

“The Undercurrent” will not be the last Little Theatre play to be billed along with “sister acts” and song-and-dance features. The tribe is likely to hear its own lays hereafter in the middle of the clearing.

—Editorial in The Morning Star, Vancouver, B. C., September 4, 1928.

IGNORANT MAKE VIRTUE A CRIME

It is seldom that a vaudeville audience, or for that matter any other audience, has an opportunity of seeing so perfect a piece of stagecraft as “The Undercurrent,” which was shown last week at Nixon’s Grand Opera House on the R-K-O circuit.

The one-act play presented a vivid picture of life, the characters being a brutal janitor and his brow-beaten wife, their son and daughter, a mischievous neighbor and a social worker.

The playlet showed many things. It showed how, in the hands of the ignorant, virtue is transformed into a cruel crime. Pa Fishyer has a code of good conduct which he instills into his family with blows and paternal tyranny. The family is spiritually sick, and they fear and hate him. The playlet is another evidence of growing self-consciousness and a return visit would be more than welcome.

—Editorial in Philadelphia Daily News, March 18, 1929.

MRS. FAY EHLERT

To-day, at 1 P.M., in Beury Auditorium, the author of “The Undercurrent,” a one-act play, will address Temple University students under the auspices of the Templayers.

It is interesting to note that “The Undercurrent,” which Mrs. Fay Ehlert submitted to the Little Theatre tournament in Chicago, won the Edith Rockefeller McCormick cup, the first prize. What is even more interesting and should arouse the investigation by students is that this playlet is regarded by many critics as the greatest one-act production ever written.

Temple students should avail themselves of this rare opportunity to meet or listen to Mrs. Ehlert. There is no doubt that she will have a message to give to her audience, especially that group interested in contemporaneous dramatics. Occasions like this help to round up the education of college students for they bring to the college speakers who are in actual contact with authorities in the work-a-day practical world.

—Editorial in Temple University News, Philadelphia, Pa., March 8, 1929.

The thanks of a public extending far beyond the comparatively narrow limits of vaudeville most assuredly will be heaped on President Hiram S. Brown of R-K-O for his recent declaration in favor of stretching the major circuit’s policy in regard to the one-act play....

Often, in fact much too often, the former administrations of the big time have promised solemnly that they will boost the one-act play.... It has almost reached the point, however, where the cry of “Wolf” has been given too often. Yet, with the undisputed success of Fay Ehlert’s classic of a one-acter, The Undercurrent, ringing in our ears, we can conceive of the big time being really in earnest now to boost sketch material as it has never been boosted before. After all, The Undercurrent is making money for R-K-O, and it is creating good will. Every movement needs its leader. The dramatic sketch in vaudeville has one in Mrs. Ehlert and her knockout of a sketch.

Bringing the one-acter back to its old place in the vaudeville realm will mean more to vaudeville (as vaudeville and not as an impersonal link in a monopolistic chain) than any single factor we can think of at this writing. The sketch fills a place that cannot be usurped by flash and acrobatic acts and “whoopee” units. One can’t get away from the fact that there has been something vitally lacking in vaudeville these last several seasons while the sketch has been wearing the weeds as a grass widow, divorced from its rightful mate, vaudeville.

We like and heartily applaud Hi Brown’s publicized determination to boost the one-acter. He can stop our little show any day in the week by proving to us and all the others interested that he means what he says.

—Editorial in The Billboard, April 13, 1929.

THE THEATRE’S POWER

One of the splendid examples of the excellent work by the “Little Theatres” of this country is to be staged in Albany next week in Fay Ehlert’s “The Undercurrent,” booked for the Grand.

In these days of “whoopee” shows, canned music and celuloid thrillers it is refreshing to find, of all places, in a vaudeville bill a burning human drama that drives home a moral lesson, vividly and concisely and makes one feel that the theatre is actually a force in the development of American character.

There is a real hope for the legitimate drama when a vaudeville house makes a play like this one a feature of its bill.

—Editorial in The Albany Citizen, April 5, 1929.

THE UNDERCURRENT

Ugyancsak nyitott szemmel kell a világban járni annak, aki a minden szépitgetés nélküli reális életet akarja a szinpadra vinni a maga kegyetlen, hideg és kiméletlen valóságában. A körülöttük mozgó zavaros athmoszféra minden furcsaságát és szertelenségét legkevésbé azok érzékelik, kik szenvedő alanyai az élet kisebb-nagyobb tragikumának.

Más légkörben élő és tisztultabb erkölcsi érzékkel rendelkező egyének képesek csak megérteni azokat a szenvedéseket és belőlük levonható tanulságokat, mik az emberi erények és gyengeségek összeütközéséből keletkeznek.

A mindennapi élet soha meg nem szűnő apró tragikumait szinpadra csak lehet vinni, ha azok a megszólalásig hüvisszatükröződései az életnek. Máskülönben unalmas, szintelen és erőtlen a darab, mert apró drámák — kis szenzációk.

A nyomort, sőtétséget és emberi szenvedést megkapóbban Maxim Gorkijnál senki sem tudta szinpadra vinni. Azonban Gorkij egy férfi volt, kinek irányát követni csak férfiak merészelték, mert alacsonyabb lelki életet élők világának tanulmányozására a gyengébb nem idegrendszere nem volt berendezve.

Azonban a modern nő lépést tart a férfiakkal és nem riad vissza olyan problémák fejtegetésétől, mikre a tegnap nője még borzalommal gondolt volna. Egy ilyen uttörő, modern nő Fay Ehlert, ki “Undercurrent” cimü egy felvonásos drámájában merész kézzel, de érző szivvel tár elénk egy mindennapi életképet, melynek milliőjét Gorkij sem választhatta volna meg reálisabban. Ez az izigvérig modern nő megtalálja még a legsötétebb környezetben is a jót és nemeset, az egyszerü külső alatt is finoman érzékeny szivet, s a határtalan anyai szeretetnek és aggodalomnak egyszerü keresetlen szavakban annyi melegseggel képes kifejezést adni, hogy a közönség átérzi, sőt átéli a szeme előtt lejátszódó kis tragédia minden fájdalmát.

—Editorial in Philadelphia I Függetlenség—Independence, March 15, 1929.

“THE UNDERCURRENT”

Fay Ehlerts packende Skizze aus dem Leben. Zugstück in Keith’s Palace Theater.

Wer in ein Vaudeville-Theater geht, weiß meistens schon im voraus, was er zu sehen bekommt. Manchmal wird man aber überrascht, angenehm überrascht, wie diese Woche im Keith’s Palace Theater. Tanz und Gesang rauschen an uns vorüber, auf einmal, plötzlich und unerwartet, steht man mitten im Leben, draußen auf der Straße der Großstadt, oder in der “Basement”-Küche eines Hausverwalters, des “Janitors” eines amerikanischen Wohnhauses. Die Vorgänge in der Familie versetzen uns in die rauhe Wirklichkeit. Der Vater glaubt seinen Erziehungspflichten zu genügen, wenn er seine zwei Kinder, Annie und Emil, recht streng behandelt, zu sklavischen Gehorsam erzieht, so wie man es “vordem” mit ihm gemacht hat. Er erreicht aber gerade das Gegenteil. Die Mutter erzittert in Furcht vor ihm, und die Kinder schlagen den falschen Weg ein. Wir lesen so viel über Kindererziehung und modernes Familienleben, hier ist ein-aktiges Drama, “The Undercurrent” von Fay Ehlert, das jeder Vater und jede Mutter sich ansehen sollte.

Dem wahren Leber entnommen, packt das Stück mit unwiderstehlicher Gewalt und gibt jedem, den Vätern, Müttern, getreuen Nachbarn und desgleichen, eine gute Lehre mit auf den Weg. Kein Wunder, daß das Haus nach der Vorstellung in Beifallsstürme ausbrach und der Vorhang sich achtmal hob und senkte, die Zuschauer im Theater sitzen blieben, um das Stück ein zweites Mal zu sehen, während inzwischen draußen auf der Straße die Schaulustigen in langen Reihen standen und ungeduldig auf Einlaß warteten. Eine wunderbare Skizze, von Fay Ehlert den Tiefen des Menschenherzens abgelauscht!

Die Verfasserin hat das Stück selbst in Szene gesetzt und sich auch hierbei als Künstlerin erwiesen. Gespielt wurde von den Vertretern der verschiedenen Rollen mit staunenswerter Echtheit. Da muß zuerst Harriet Allyn erwähnt werden, die in der Rolle der Mutter eigentlich einen Charakter schuf, der im Theaterleben bis jetzt nur sehr selten zu finden war, eine von Angst und Fürsorge für die Kinder und unterwürfigem Gehorsam gegen den Mann zermürbte Frau.

Die Unterströmung, die das ganze Stück durchzieht, ist das Wesen des Vaters. Er hat die gute Absicht, seine Kinder ordentlich zu erziehen. Manchmal fühlt man Mitleid mit dem Mann, der in seiner Unkenntnis der menschlichen Psyche den Bogen allzustraff spannt. Wir könnten uns keinen besseren Vertreter für die Rolle denken als Curt Benisch. Seine verhaltene Wut, seine zurückgedämmte Kraft, das Bewußtsein, daß er unbedingt recht handelt nach seinen Begriffen, das alles wußte Curt Benisch in großem Künstlertum zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Die Zuschauer saßen in nervöser Spannung, daß sein Temperament unerwartet auch über sie hereinbrechen möchte.

Fast ohne ein Wort zu sprechen, zeichnete Charles White den Sohn; in Kostüm und Ausdruck durchaus lebenswahr wird die Tochter Annïe von Gladys Pfeffer gespielt; die schwatzhafte, klatschsüchtige Nachbarin und das versöhnende Element, die Wohlfahrtsdame, finden in Florence Thompson und Ethel Swift geeignete Vertreter. Alles in allem: ein glänzendes Stück, brillant inszeniert und ganz hervorragend gespielt. Hut ab!

—Wächter und Anzeiger, Cleveland, Ohio, December 12, 1928.

PRZEDSTAWIENIE SŁAWNEJ AUTORKI

W naszem mieście będziemy mieli sposobność zobaczyć po raz pierwszy sztukę p. t. “The Undercurrent,” napisaną przez Panią Fay Ehlert, żonę Konsula tego kraju do Chile. Sztuka ta jest napisaną na tle życia ubogiego stróża, mieszkającego w suterynie wraz z rodziną.

Sztuka “The Undercurrent” spotkała się z wielu trudnościami i przeszkodami, zanim dostała się na scenę. Wiadomem jest, jak nieraz autor, bardzo utalentowany, pisze, pracuje z zaparciem siebie, wykończa swoje dzieło w najlepszej myśli, w najlepszej wierze—i w końcu spotyka się z zawodem, z trudnościami różnemi, zanim jego dzieło jest przyjęte przez któregoś z dyrektorów teatralnych. Taki też los spotkał i Panią Ehlert, która wszystkie siły swego talentu wytężała i pracowała nad wykończeniem swej sztuki. Wiele by trzeba było poświęcić czesu, aby opisać, jakie trudności miała Pani Ehlert, aby zwrócić uwagę któregoś z impresarjów teatralnych na swą sztukę. Chodziła od jednego do drugiego dyrektora i wszędzie spotykała się z odmową. Nie dała jednak za wygraną. Wierząc mocno w gruntowną wartość swej pracy, swego dzieła—dopięła celu. Na sztukę jej zwrócił uwagę jeden ze znawców, ocenił ją i wystawił na scenie.

Gdy pierwszy raz sztuka była odegrana, wywołała ona wielki entuzjazm wśród publiczności.—Wszyscy dyrektorzy, którzy przedtem odmówili, zauważyli, że popełnili wielki błąd i z żalem przyznali, że istotnie “The Undercurrent” jest dziełem artystycznem w swym rodzaju, którego oni nie umieli wpierw ocenić.

Dobitnym dowodem zainteresowania się publiczności tą sztuką jest fakt, że była ona grana od Kalifornji do New Yorku w pierwszorzędnych teatrach około ośmset razy.

Z końcem tego tygodnia, to jest we czwartek, piątek i sobotę, sztuka ta jest wystawiana w teatrze Gaiety.

—Maria G. Gomolska in Słowo Polskie, April 19, 1929.

HAIL THE PERFECT SKETCH!

Our humble genuflexions to its author, and a thousand thanks on behalf of all interested in the furtherance of the sketch in vaudeville to R-K-O for heaping upon it the distinction of booking it into the Palace and the choicest of its stands thruout the country. There may be better one-act plays, but we haven’t seen them in vaudeville yet. The time may come; real soon, we hope, if the big-time executives can be made to see that vaudeville sorely needs sketches with even an iota of the merit of Mrs. Ehlert’s brain child. In trade terms she has brought forth a Christ. As it winds its way thru the various sections of the country it will preach its mission, and who knows but at the end of its trail word will come of converts to the Great Cause. With “The Undercurrent” swinging along—and there’s no reason why it should not keep up its energetic pace for a long, long time—the case for the dramatic sketch will be kept alive. Let the protagonists of this form of vaudeville entertainment heat their iron while the fire is hot.

Mrs. Ehlert’s playlet is a paradox of homeliness and beauty, combining these qualities in a homogeneous mass as it was permitted Abe Lincoln to do. Its drabness is not cheap and sensational. It points no lucid moral. Like those literary vignettes lately grown popular it presents to us a moving, compelling slice of real-life action. It is left for the spectator to draw his conclusions. Whatever they may be there are few of normal intelligence who will not react emotionally and intellectually to the problem presented by the plotless plot.

We are introduced to a janitor’s hovel in the basement of an apartment building. We see the bull-headed, ignorant father going thru the routine of an evening in what he calls home. There is the warped, beaten and loving mother; her dull, bullied son and the wayward daughter. A slatternly neighbor comes into the scene and thru her we are introduced into various angles of the family’s existence. Then enters a social worker. The human drama is on. It burns with its frankness and compels with its character drawing. We are made to see that the father, beaten into a senseless bully by his own progenitor, is in turn deluded into thinking that he is successful in beating doubtless virtue into his offspring. The girl is by nature a good girl, but her father’s bullying has driven her into the streets, and thence into the morals court. The janitor prides himself on the hair-trigger control he possesses over his children, but to those less blinded by their own ego the boy hates him worse than rat poison, and the girl is fast being pushed to ruin. The social worker is evidently on the scene in the nick of time, this being incidentally the only vestige of a plot in the playlet. The father is about to learn of his daughter’s police record from the blabbering tongue of the neighbor when the lady of the upper strata concocts an alibi and saves the girl from a volley of welts and punches. Miss Social Worker takes the girl away from the cesspool—for good. As they are leaving the janitor asks that he be informed if the girl gives her future guardian trouble. Miss Social Worker’s parting shot, “You’d be a great help!” brings down the curtain.

We’ve said enough about the play. As for the cast, it is overwhelming in its fitness. The bright and particular star, from our angle, is Harriet Allyn. In her Ma Fishyer role she puts over a piece of character portrayal that hasn’t been approached at the Palace since Lucille LaVerne fried bacon in Sun Up. It won’t be long before the money boys nab her. Curt Benisch, as Pa Fishyer, also gives a sensational performance. He’s a tabloid of Gregory Ratoff—and to us that means as good as they come. Gladys Pfeffer appeals mightily as the daughter, as does Charles White as the son. In her brief bits Florence Thompson does a corking job of the neighbor role. Margaret Moore was the least bit stiff in the social worker’s part, but she’s excused on the ground that she’s a late addition to the cast. Reception here went to six curtain calls and a show stop.

—Elias E. Sugarman in The Billboard, February 2, 1929.

SUPERBILL OF VAUDEVILLE ON AT THE PALACE

Despite handicaps well-nigh unsurmountable, “The Undercurrent,” a one-act play by Fay Ehlert of Chicago, not only made good at the Palace yesterday afternoon, but scored so decisively with the hard-boiled initial matinee audience of experienced vaudeville-goers as to leap to a headline position on an extraordinarily good bill—and that Palace Sunday matinee audience is seldom stampeded by anybody. Beatrice Lillie, for example, couldn’t get under its crust, nor Willie Collier, nor Florence Reed, and if President Coolidge and King George should hook up as a dancing team, they’d have to dance as well as Bill Robinson to get by.

The handicaps “The Undercurrent” faced are these:

(1) It originated in a “little theatre,” and good comes as seldom out of the “little theatre” as out of Nazareth;

(2) it won first prize in a Chicago “little theatre” tournament, the Edith Rockefeller McCormick cup, than which nothing would seem to spell surer damnation;

(3) it is presented by the same group of Evanston “little theatre” actors who played it originally, a handicap to be overcome only by a miracle. The Orpheum circuit of experienced amusement purveyors felt all these things so poignantly as to be constrained to offer an apology for giving it a place on the hill—“encouragement of home talent,” “civic pride,” or something like that.

But “The Undercurrent” came through the ordeal with flying colors—and despite another handicap probably rectified by now, namely: the players, used to small halls, pitched their voices so low they were nearly lost in the vastness of the Palace auditorium.

“The Undercurrent” is a tense story of sordid tenement life—a sort of an echo of “John Ferguson,” but not so much so as to rob Mrs. Ehlert of the glory of an original plot. This plot has to do with a stern, Bible-reading, iron-willed janitor who has brought up his children in the way they should go, and whose daughter, escaping the stern discipline of the home, becomes a street walker. The episode pictured is the attempt of the daughter, her mother, and a social worker to keep the God-fearing janitor from finding out what his daughter has done. The plot is skillfully constructed, tense and explosive, and the acting is astonishingly good.

There is no severer test for a dramatic sketch than the song and dance atmosphere of a vaudeville show, and “The Undercurrent” demonstrated yesterday that it is at least three times as good as it must have seemed in the “little theatre” tournament at the Goodman Theatre.

—C. J. Bulliet in Chicago Evening Post, June 25, 1928.

Mrs. Ehlert’s play shows searchingly how a bigoted foreign father brings ruin upon the happiness of his family by warping justice into injustice through his fanatical method of administering it. It is a tense drama packed with interest from start to finish.

The cast, the same that won the contest, is playing it at the Palace and giving an exceptionally fine performance, particularly C. Russell Small as the father, and Harriet Allyn as the mother. Excellent also are Gladys Pfeffer, Charles White, Ethel R. Swift and Helen Sanford. Over half a dozen curtain calls attested to that fact that an unusual offering such as this is a good piece of commercial “theatre” also.

—Fritz Blocki in Chicago Evening American, Tuesday, June 26, 1928.

“It’s an excellent one-acter, sharp, sure, unexpectedly effective.”

—Robert Garland in The New York Telegram, January 22, 1929.

“This drama, which is sponsored by the Radio-Keith-Albee corporation, is an exceptionally fine contribution to the Vaudeville stage and far above the average sketch. A capable cast interpreted the roles.”

—Julius Cohen in Journal of Commerce, January, 22 1929.

“THE UNDERCURRENT” ACTED AT THE PALACE

Chicago Little Theatre Prize Winning Play is Realistic

“It is written sincerely and observantly, and tells its not overburdening story with effective simplicity.”

—John Byram in The New York Times, January 21, 1929.

“The author has captured the brutal atmosphere of a family in which the father, a janitor, believes that his children can be made to love him by continued mental and physical floggings, and has arranged the whole in a few deft situations.”

—New York Herald-Tribune, January 22, 1929.

RADIO-KEITH-ORPHEUM PALACE TRACK

Winners at a glance.

1—“The Undercurrent”

2—Barry & Whitlege

3—Webb & Hay

“It has been a long time since a sketch has been as well received at this track as was “The Undercurrent” last Monday night. The fans received it like money from home. Which proves that when a sketch is what it should be, it will be as well received as any other act.... This sketch would be good for a route, for it will play equally well anywhere.”

—Paul Sweinhart in Zit’s, January 26, 1929.

MANHATTAN MADNESS

“To get good sketches for vaudeville is difficult, for to tell a story in 15 minutes, a complete story with a dramatic climax and coherent plot, gripping from beginning to end, requires exceedingly great skill. But this is what Mrs. Fay Ehlert has accomplished in “The Undercurrent,” at the Palace Theatre, after seven months’ touring over R-K-O time.... Editorial comment has been showered on this terse little drama and it never fails to grip each audience and cause tremendous applause.”

—Robert Coleman in Daily Mirror, New York, N. Y., Monday, January 21, 1929.

NOBLE

Our Noble Prize award for today: To Mrs. Fay Ehlert, authoress of “The Undercurrent,” the Chicago Little Theater prize-winning skit, now a feature of the Palace bill closing today, for its inherent entertaining merits.

—Ohio State Journal, Columbus, November 28, 1928.

PALACE

“The Undercurrent,” by Fay Ehlert, winner of the Edith Rockefeller McCormick cup in the recent Little Theatre contest, was presented in the four-spot. The play deals with a wayward daughter, Bible-reading father from the old country, social worker from the morals court, gossip and a brow-beaten mother and son. Whole family very much in awe of the stern father of the “old school,” with the little skit packing a tremendous wallop and holding the breaths of the house straight through from start to finish.”

—Variety, June 27, 1928.

“The Undercurrent,” prize-winning play of the Chicago Little Theatre tournament, was in third position, and upon conclusion took nine curtains, none of which were begged. Harriett Allyn as a janitor’s wife, Curt Benisch as her husband, and Florence Thompson as a neighbor, brought to this arty dramatic sketch a talent which made it outstanding and an act to be remembered.”

—Inside Facts of Stage and Screen, Los Angeles, Saturday, Oct. 13, 1928.

AT THE PALACE

“Occupying an important spot at the Palace this week is a sketch straightly dramatic and singularly different from the general run of sketches.... A hideous cruel picture that Mrs. Ehlert has drawn with no small amount of skill.... An extraordinarily sincere and effective one-act play.”

—Jeffery Holmesdale in The World, New York, January 22, 1929.

AT THE PALACE

“This observer, who has sat and squirmed through many a dull playlet on the Orpheum boards, found himself (with the rest of the audience) vigorously applauding a one-acter that has not a laugh in it.... It is heavily tragic, but so truly written and ably performed that it gripped the attention of an audience that had expected the worst. The cast took six curtain calls, an amazing thing for unknown players in an unknown playlet. The play comes to New York after a similar success over the whole R-K-O route, and if Vaudeville’s new moguls have any lingering doubts that Palace audiences will appreciate worthy sketches, the reception to Mrs. Ehlert’s work should clear their minds.”

—Carl Helm in The New York Sun, January 22, 1929.

PLAYLET AIDS PALACE BILL

Clever Sketch Tops Offering

“If you can be thrilled by as perfectly written and presented a one-act playlet as has ever been offered to a Vaudeville audience, the Palace Theatre, where Fay Ehlert’s “The Undercurrent” is one of the chief offerings on an excellent program, is the spot for that type of reaction this week.... For its first New York showing the Palace Theatre was selected. The Palace has many times shown a restlessness during dramatic acts of this type. Sunday afternoon that same audience seemed to sit spellbound. Mrs. Ehlert has not only shown herself a word-character painter of ability, but she has also proved her adeptness in staging a playlet which she has done herself.”

—H. David Strauss in The Morning Telegraph, January 21, 1929.