REVIEW OF D.U. PRODUCTION

To a distinguished list of revivals of Elizabethan plays, the Delta Upsilon this year adds Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors." The production is ambitious and interesting. For one of the first times in this country a setting is shown such as Munich and other German cities have long used for Shakespearean plays. A dark blue cyclrama drop fills the back of the stage. At front as a kind of inner proscenium, or as replacing the tormentors of former days, are doors at left and right in panels painted to represent marble. Pinkish curtains carry the eye back from the drop curtain to these panels. Properties or bits of setting placed between these panels and the back drop vary the full-stage scenes. In Adriana's house rich, red curtains shut off all except front stage. The thoughtful and skillful setting proves how well suggestion can replace detail and give a greater beauty.

The sudden illness of Mr. Whittemore and the consequent re-arrangement of parts at the last moment probably accounts for acting at this first performance more like that of a dress rehearsal. The verse play, however, brings out even in professionals all covert faults of enunciation and intonation. Indistinctness even among the most experienced in the Delta Upsilon cast was marked. Moreover, time has made stale so many of the lines which originally delighted an audience that the comedy must be played fast, with skillful pointing of the lines and some building up by action to make places weak for a modern audience produce their old effect. There was too much over-rapid speech with slowness on cues. The cast should act not merely while speaking but steadily, keeping well within the picture. The actors should let themselves go enjoy the fun of the play and thus make the audience enjoy it. In the last scene of act 4 and in act 5 the company gave the effect which the whole play should produce. D. F. Fenn and R. C. Fenn acted steadily and well as the two Dromios. Mr. Zinsser spoke the few lines of the Courtesan with delightful clearness, drawing swiftly at the same time a well defined character. A determined effort by the rest of the company will make the acting in the second performance as interesting and effective as the novel setting.