COLLEGE REPRESSIVE, SAYS BARRIE HEROINE

"College too often conceals the emotions, makes you self conscious, critical." Miss Helen Hayes, star of "What Every, Woman Knows", the Barrie play now packing the Plymouth Theatre, was insistent.

Forgetful of the crowd of devotees, at last allowing the CRIMSON reporter a moment's chat the delightful lady who had once given the Theatre Guild audiences a glimpse of the Shavian Cleopatra plunged immediately into a serious discussion of the modern theatre. Not believing that college is in any sense a training school for the theatre, Miss Hayes is nevertheless pleased to find so many undergraduates interested in the world of the masque and buskin.

"You don't need to act or write plays to be a part of the theatre. The audience, if it is really appreciative, can do as much for the progress of the drama as can the actor or actress."

Approves Little Theatre

Speaking of the Little Theatre and Repertory movement, Miss Hayes gave both her sincere commendation. She did qualify this by suggesting that neither had a very direct connection with the practical, working stage, the stage known to the layman by the term "Broad-way". Like all other arts the theatre requires a certain amount of common sense, which if vulgar makes for box office receipts. "Shakespere", said the Barrie heroine, "was after all rather practical. He played for the gate, you know."

Most suggestive of the comments Miss Hayes so courteously made was her statement concerning the growth of the "type" actor in the theatre. Where once versatility counted for much in the actor's bag of tricks, it now counts for little. Nor did Miss Hayes believe this to be other than good." It gives", she said, "the individual a greater chance to develop his art within very fixed limits. And that, as you know, is after all conducive to the greatest art."

Miss Le Gallienne and Mr. Hampden were cited as successful at the Garrick method of verisimilitude in parts. Miss Hayes believes these rather exceptions than otherwise. Their success she thought due to the individual success of the particular actor in a particular role. Indeed, the idea of Alfred Lunt as a whimsical gentleman one week and a traffic cop or bootlegger the next, did not appeal to the erstwhile Cleopatra at all.

Boston Audiences Non-Puritan

Of course Miss Hayes was asked the inevitable question concerning Boston audiences. "I find them", she said, "most responsive, although hardly representative of the dignified. Puritanesque tradition so often associated with the town." At this particular moment a best friend and severest critic asked, just why the second act was so different one night last week.

The smile with which "Dear Brutus" had once captured gay New York--and then--"But, my dear, you know, I was acting away for all I was worth when I looked around and the curtain had come down. One can not always "strut his hour" not on a Boston stage." The severest critic retreated.