COMMENT

In days when it is customary to expound the defects of the rising generation it is pleasant to find that youth often justifies itself in a quite unexpected manner to a quite unexpected degree, and confirms the suspicion of some of its teachers that it has rather more than its share of talent, ability and courage. A striking example of this has been given by the Harvard Dramatic Club, which entirely against the advice of many of the elders who were consulted decided to put on the stage Andreyev's "The Life of Man", and did so with more success than has attended any performance in recent years.

It would be hard to find conditions for successfully producing this play in the best professional theatres in New York. It is not strange that the older advisors thought that the Harvard Dramatic Club was steering straight for certain failure when it decided to attempt this task. But the young men and girls of the Club were right; they knew what they could do, and they did it. The play was a success in every detail, not least in the stage settings, which were the most successful seen for many years in Boston or Cambridge. And the effect of the whole was enhanced by strangely beautiful music, also the composition of an undergraduate. Altogether it was a memorable performance which will remain long in the minds of those who saw it. It is much to be regretted that it could not be produced at least for a few nights, just as it was in Cambridge, in one of the smaller theatres in New York where there would surely be many who would be delighted to see it and who would probably come more than once. --Kirsopp Lake in "The New Republic".