Drama

'LETTERS IN CANADA: 1941 305 who has more sense than the police. The elements in Mr Dix's story are as standardized: Scotland Yard, a foul den in Whitechapel , a small group of threatened victims, and several murders under s~milar circumstances with the subjects scrupulously chosen in alphabetical order. The story is brought a little closer than usual to place and time by the use in the plot of the blackout, Czech refugees, and the agents of the Gestapo. Both books should entertain everyone except superior connoisseurs of crime fiction and people who never touch the stuff. As usual there are several books for children well worth mentioning . The scene of John Morgan Gray's yarn for boys, The One-Eyed Trapper, is an advanced Canadian school that goes in more for sports and wood-lore than for bookish activities. Consequently he is able to combine neatly three favourite themes of juvenile fiction: private-school life, learning about nature in the wild, and daring conflict with sinister enemies, in this case a gang of kidnappers and the trapper in their pay. Two Lost on Dartmoor, by Elizabeth Sprigge, is, like her earlier books, a pleasant story of the milder adventures of children and their ponies in an English setting. Her style is again fluent and natural, and the book is illustrated with pencil drawings by T. L. Greenshields. For somewhat younger readers there is Jory•s Cove, by Clare Bice, about a small boy and his friends in a fishing-village of Nova Scotia. This is an unusually handsome book that should please not only its designed public, but also persons who care for fine printing, illustration and binding. III. DRAMA w. s. MILNE The crop of plays is slender. The war has interfered with the activity of the Little Theatre from coast to coast; and where there is no producing theatre, there will be no playwrights. Some groups are carrying on with crippled personnel, and many more would continue to function if they were convinced that they were contributing to the war effort by so doing, and if they were given constructive leadership from the Dominion Drama Festival executive, or from such war organizations as the committees for entertainment of troops in training. But-there are larger reasons for keeping the art of the theatre alive among us. An editorial writer in the Calgary Herald, dealing with the dramatic activities 306 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY of the students of the Banff School of Fine Arts, says, "It may well be that they~ schooled in the creation of the gracious stimulants of life, will ·be called upon to play an important part in the re7 establishment of normal existence after the present fury has abated." Something may be said, too, for the value of the theatre in maintaining civilian morale in a society geared to the terrific strain of production for victory. Canada has not felt much strain yet; but it is worthy of note that in the countries where that strain has been intensest, the authorities have gone out of their way to encourage purely cultural activity, and the theatre above all. Moscow, for example, at the time this is being written, is having a three-day Shakespeare festival. However, the fact remains that such Little Theatre groups in Canada as have not folded up for the duration in face of the difficulties of war-time production, or transformed themselves into concert parties or pierrot troupes, continue their limited activities in a pathetically apologetic manner. Hence, there is a dearth of plays. Of published plays, there are only four, two of them printed in periodicals. Anne of Avonlea is a three-act dramatization of L. M. Montgomery's book, suitable for presentation by societies with limited technical resources. It is not distingui~hed aesthetically , but has in it what will doubtless give pleasure to many. The University of Saskatchewan Sheaf presents Donald Greene's {(The Organizer," a powerful but rather artificial play of the "box-stove" school, in which a farmer neglects his farm for politics, the cow dies, one son rebels and leaves, and the father decides on wider political fields to conquer. The situations are...