A Promise Fulfilled
Mr. Green is coming of age at last, and to say that his play ["The House of Connelly"] is by far the most interesting presented this season on Broadway would be to say much too little. As a whole it is very, very good; in places it reveals writing as fine as it has ever been my privilege to admire in an American drama, and today we may safely speak not of "promise" but of accomplishment.
Hitherto Mr. Green has never sufficiently emerged as an individual from the group of which he was a part. Assiduous cultivator of the "folk drama" and savior of the Little Theater movement, his plays seemed so much what they were expected to be that the curse of an all-too-obvious worthiness was upon them, and they were made for the approval of a cult. But in "The House of Connelly" he achieves a fully developed individuality of method and of flavor; he speaks with a voice unmistakably his own; and he proves that he has something really valuable to give. Moreover, his tone seems doubly original for the reason that it is so little related to that of the best of our other playwrights. Howard, Stallings, Rice, and, to some extent, also O'Neill resemble one another at least to the extent that they are harsh and violent, that they have made art out of crassness and brutality. But Paul Green introduces a fresh note of poetry of a different kind. He is gentle, elegiac, and melancholy. His play, despite its elements of violence, is tender without sentimentality and almost wholly beautiful.
Superficially, to be sure, the story which he tells is one which any other folk dramatist might have chosen…. But what raises it to its present high level is the fact that its author has discovered how to exploit in his own sensitive way the poetry of its implications. In his hands it becomes not so much a story as a quasi-musical "arrangement," in which we see and hear and feel a situation rich not only in conflicts but in pathos and charm and loveliness as well. Here is a civilization which is dying and which should die; a civilization which was founded upon arrogant privilege and which revealed its rottenness through the shameful, illegitimate misalliances which it commonly tolerated. But it was a civilization which had its elements of beauty as well as its pride and its fortitude, and Mr. Green makes us feel all these things….
The effect which Mr. Green achieves is one which irresistibly suggests one of the miracles of Chekhov, and it is accomplished in somewhat the same way—by the employment, that is to say, of scenes and dialogues which are almost magically suggestive. It is, perhaps, chiefly on those few occasions when the author strikes a false note that one realizes how frequently he has succeeded in suggesting what could never be effectively said…. Atmosphere is generated one hardly knows how, and emotion steals out over the footlights like some at first imperceptible perfume. One is relatively indifferent as to what finally happens and Mr. Green is certainly best when he is merely exhibiting his characters, but certain personages and certain scenes—like the Christmas dinner—will not easily be forgotten. They have a power without violence which is rare and memorable.
Joseph Wood Krutch, "A Promise Fulfilled," in The Nation (copyright 1931 The Nation magazine, The Nation Associates, Inc.), Vol. CXXXIII, No. 3458, October 14, 1931, p. 408.
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