Drama

272 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY (BRIAN), The executioners (Toronto, Harlequin Books, 157 pp., 25c.). MOWAT (GRACE HELEN ), Broken barrier: a romance of Staten Island and the province of New Brunswick; with a foreword by The Honourable D. L. MACLAREN (Fredericton, University Press of New Brunswick, viii, 182 pp., $2.50). RILEY (LOUISE), One happy moment (Toronto, Copp Clark, iv, 212 pp., $3). SYMONS (HA'RRV), The bored meeting (Toronto, Ryerson, vi, 121 pp., $2.50) VACZEK (LOUIS), The frightened dove (New York, Scribner; Toronto, Saunders, vi, 192 pp., $3.25). YOUNG (PATRICIA)' East of Bow Bells (London and Mel· bourne, Ward Lock; Toronto, Ryerson, 1950, 221 pp., $2). Ill. DRAMA VINCENT TOVELL Year after year these reports on Canadian play writing have come to the same depressing conclusion: our plays are, with only rare exceptions , amateur and inferior to Canadian writing in other forms. Stimulated, and paid for, by the C.B.C., radio writing has gradually become thoroughly professional in Canada and, measured by standards appropriate to that medium, I think some of it has been outstanding in recent years. But there has been no such sponsor for our theatre. While a patron cannot command first-rate work I think nobody will deny that it simply does not pay a writer to give serious attention to the theatre in Canada and that this has greatly handicapped our development in this field. Perhaps C.B.C. Television will give the playwright . his big chance. That medium will certainly offer him far greater scope than radio, a large audience, and at least some sort of payment too. This chronicle then may yet-and before long- be cheerier to read, and to write. Meanwhile, I think the London Little Theatre has the right idea in offering a prize of $1,000 for an original play which it will produce. This is a real reward for serious work. Last year the prize went to Joseph Schull for "Shadow of a Tree." Some may recall a radio version of the play done several seasons ago on the C.B.C.'s "Stage" series. It concerns a Canadian family torn, and finally broken, by moral conflicts. The father is a corrupt business man masking malpractices behind a memorial hospital. His married son is involved with the hospital'S unscrupulous benefactress; and a younger son, blinded in the war, is quite lost in actual and spiritual darkness. The father, in the end, is destroyed and each son is left to fumble towards some sort of compromise with himself. It is a sordid picture but willy-nilly a faith in the future, in the "noble lunacy" of life, is affirmed. Mr. Schull is a practised writer; he can build scenes and generate dramatic heat. But in this case his effects are contrived and unconvincing. He has overdone the dramatics. The characters seem to lurch from posture to posture and the hortatory climax comes directly from the author ' LETTERS IN CANADA, 1951 273 without respect to his characters or the situation he has created for them. In "Argus Bank" Graham Ferguson also makes a comment on a part of Canadian life--and again the results are disappointing because the dramatic germ hasn't been developed satisfactorily. The hero, in this play, is a disillusioned veteran who has withdrawn to a spectator's position in an eastern Canadian port. Against his will, however, the violence of a dock strike catapults him into physical, and moral, action which he is quite unprepared for, which he cannot cope with, and which finally destroys him. There is a core of tragedy here and the theme is interesting, since it touches on some of the great issues bedevilling our generation. But as "Argus Bank" stands, the plot rambles and the characters are allowed to talk on aimlessly. If Mr. Ferguson were to sharpen the issue of the reflective man pitted against brutal forces and expose more clearly the nature of his moral paralysis it seems to me his play would gain greatly in impact. "Lady in a Maze," by H . Shirley Fowke, is based on George Meredith's novel The Egoist. Since I do not find Meredith's characters or plot especially...