Monday, Nov. 17, 1941
New Play in the World
Jim Dandy (by William Saroyan; released by National Theater Conference) is a good show at least part of the time; whether it is a play is another question. It might as well have been called Fun & Stuff in the San Francisco Public Library. According to frabjous Author Saroyan, "it contains no characters, no imitations of people, and no plot. It contains the writer (weight 170), the reader when read, and the beholder when seen."
But Author Saroyan, for once, is unfair to himself. His latest theatrical what-is-it, which he has literally given to the world,* is like watching the romp of a terrible child who knows when he is being cute. At times the show-off gets tiresome, but there are moments when the beholder is genuinely amused, others when he is moved and impressed.
The scene (same set throughout) is apparently the reading room of a public library. But it is obviously not quite an ordinary reading room. In a revolving door a shawled figure treads slowly round & round; the pretty librarian reclines on a couch; one of the readers wears a small coffin as a shoe (he has one foot in the grave) ; another is gloomily reading Joyce's Ulysses for the third time. Nobody is at all surprised when a Negro, uniformed like a doorman and blowing a bugle, heralds the approach of Mr. Jim Dandy--a fat man with no visible means of support, who says nothing for quite a while, but acts regal.
In the second act (there are only two), more of the same goes on--a little dancing, a lot of talk, some of it pretty rhythmic and highfalutin, but nothing much happens. At the end the characters depart to the sound of tolling bells. Jim Dandy, the last to leave, invites his soul by banging all the keys of the cash register, then stalks out with an enigmatic smile.
William Saroyan can raise the same kind of stirring laugh that Chekhov could. Sample: Jim Dandy's henchman reads him a sales letter from one ex-Jockey Earl Catfoot ("Why should you go without? Go with. . . . Don't be a sucker--be a winner."). The pessimist comments: "It wouldn't help." Says Jim Dandy, controlling his temper: "You may be mistaken. Weighing one hundred pounds, the man has ridden horses."
* The National Theater Conference bestows acting rights to the play on community and college theaters for what they can afford to pay. Last week Broadway critics journeyed to Princeton, N. J. to see the play performed by the Theatre Intime, an undergraduate amateur group. For further news of William Saroyan see p. 98.
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