ROGERS COMPARES MILNE TO BARRIE IN CRITICISM

The following criticism of "Success", forthcoming production of the Harvard Dramatic Club, was written for the Crimson by Professor R. E. Rogers '09, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Success", a play by A. A. Milne never before performed in America, is the Harvard Dramatic Club's winter offering, the very antipodes of the radical and highly colored "Fiesta" which made so much disturbance last year. No one need be afraid to take one's nicest relative to see it. Why "Success" has never been produced in America is not quite clear. It is no more British than "Mr. Pym", no more ironic than "The Truth About Blayds", no more fanciful than "The Romantic Age", all well beloved pieces. It is the story of a career man in the cabinet, just about to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, who meets again a friend of his boyhood and awakens sleeping memories that remind him of all he has missed in marrying and raising a family whose motto is Success. On a political visit he sleeps once more in the old bedroom where the boy once slept, and in a fantastic and pathetic dream sees the boy he might have been deadened and frustrated by the success he has willed for himself. He makes an effort, but life and his family and circumstances are too strong for him, and he kills the dream to become Chancellor.

Since Barrie no longer writes, no one has succeeded like Mr. Milne in giving us the peculiar Barrie quality, the blending of fantasy with life, the humor of taciturnity, the comedy slant on character, the bitter grimace at success so marked in Barrie's later plays. "Success" is "The Twelve Pound Look" plus "Dear Brutus" in theme, scored delicately for a small orchestra. It is not powerful but it has imagination, a wishful beauty, and a kind of hurt sincerity which one remembers.

For twenty years now the Harvard Dramatic Club has been at work doing original plays and plays new to America or to Boston. For many years overshadowed by Professor Baker's 47 Workshop, of late it must be recognized as the only organization at Harvard that takes the slightest interest in the drama. Its work has always been serious, often extraordinarily fine, and occasionally important. In the Harvard of today, where there seems so little interest in and encouragement of literature, on the part of either undergraduates or authorities, the Dramatic Club deserves attention and patronage