Echoes of the War
By . New York: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. 1919. 12mo, vi+188 pp. $1.50.
THIS volume contains four plays: ‘The Old Lady Shows her Medals.’ ‘The New Word,’ ‘Barbara’s Wedding,’ and ‘A Well-Remembered Voice.’ The first three were produced in this country last year; the fourth is now playing in London. All are one-act plays, showing the reaction of the Great War on English families whose boys are at the front.
At the start, one receives the impression that the famous ‘Old Lady’ has been rewritten in the form of a short story. It is not until page ten that one comes across any dialogue— then one suddenly realizes that all that has gone before is a glorified stage-direction. Ten pages — thatcounts out Bernard Shaw! There is more still, scattered through the dialogue without differentiation of type — more than two pages, for instance, to get the Reverend Willings on the stage. Then the names of the characters, inset in capitals in the usual manner, disappear whenever the dialogue is carried on by only two or three characters.
Despite the interpolated aids to imagination, neither ‘The Old Lady’ nor ‘The New Word’ reads as well as it acts. ‘Barbara’s Wedding’ is more comprehensible in point, but is still unsatisfactory. It is too hard to distinguish just what is hallucination, what is memory, and what is fact. It might almost have been better to omit ‘Barbara,’ were it not for its usefulness as a transition from the simple reality of the first two plays to the daring device of ‘A Well-Remembered Voice.’
This play begins with a spiritualistic séance, which fails, apparently because of the unsympathetic attitude of the father of the dead boy, with whom his mother and the girl to whom he was not quite engaged have been trying to communicate. Then, when the others have gone, the dead boy appears. Not in response to the spiritualistic summons, but simply because he wants to talk to his father. He is invisible to the audience, and to his mother and the girl, when they later reënter. His father sees him, and lays his hands on his shoulders; he helps his father on with his jacket. His voice is audible: he chats on all sorts of subjects, from trout-fishing to ‘the veil’ which separates life from death. In life, we gather, the relations of the pair were very like those of fat her and son in ‘The New Word’; but death has brought insight, and now the boy realizes that his father really loved him and misses him more than either his mother or his sweetheart.
The dialogue is easy, plausible, intimate; there is the same delicate blend of tenderness and fun that makes ‘The Old Lady’ so pleasing. But one wonders whether Barrie is trying to contribute to the venerable problem of life after death and communication between dead and living, or is merely displaying a skillful stage trick. What does he really think of spiritualism — if he is thinking at all? He makes death seem more natural and comfortable than one usually imagines it, and many people will find his idea consoling. Others will surely think it absurd, and some may find it irritating, even shocking. Certainly the play must be wonderfully acted — as wonderfully as ‘The Old Lady,’ if it is to succeed on the stage. It is dreadful to think of what might happen to it on Broadway.
F. S.