"FAITH HEALER" PRESENTED

William Vaughn Moody's the "Faith Healer" is a play which will never make a wide appeal, but the appeal will be all the deeper where it is felt. The situation is too outside our ordinary experience to be clear at once. It deals with the subtle psychic forces in our lives, the certain, but, as yet, not understood influence of character upon character.

The story told in the three acts is that of a man who has led a shepherd's life in the mountains and has felt the call of a divine power, a power which has given him the gift of healing. He has come into the home of Matthew Beeler where the causes Mrs. Beeler to walk after she has been helpless for five years. Great crowds gather awaiting his coming and his help. But he has met Mrs. Beeler's niece, Rhoda Williams and has loved her. Through this love his purpose wavers, he doubts and he loses his power of healing. And yet it is through this same love of Rhoda, with his full knowledge of her, that he conquers his own weakness and recovers his gift. They had planned to go away together to a beautiful mountain, but at the last he says to her "I tell you now of another place, higher yet, in more mysterious mountains. Travel thither for strength is there, and I will go with you, step by step, from faith to faith and from strength to strength, for I see depths of life open and heights of love come out, which I never dreamed of till now." Rhoda asks if he can mean that--that even now it is not too late. His reply is, "I mean that as you cry to me for help, the strength that I had lost pours back into my soul." In this lies the secret of the character of Michaelis and the key to the play.

The audience sits hushed during the first act, trying to get into the situation. An understanding of the character of the "Faith Healer" is difficult to many and the failure to comprehend and unquestioningly accept the fundamental thesis will make a full appreciation of the play impossible. The point, the accumulative effect of the play is apt to be lost because Mr. Moody has chosen, for the central figure, a man, so little a type and so much an individual that he has too little in common with human nature at large to be readily understood. What we fail to understand we seldom trust. The people among whom he is placed in the play are good people but their attitude towards him is the attitude of many of the audience. They cannot sympathize with him. But with it all there is a feeling of certainty, of faith in himself in this play which the American dramatist has not shown thus far. For some time we have felt a new note or at least a different note in our dramas. No one has been quite able to state just what it is, but nevertheless it, has been there. Our drama has been uncertain, wavering just as Ulrich Michaelis doubted and hesitated for a time, but Mr. Moody seems, here, to have regained the lost, to have conquered doubt, just as his hero does. This is most hopeful. Another thing which is here for the first time is the union of a thoughtful treatment with almost faultless dramatic craftsmanship. This play should mean a step forward in the development of American drama.

Mr. Miller in speaking to the audience dwelt with great emphasis upon his own appreciation of Mr. Moody's genius. He also spoke of the great work of Professor Baker. Mr. Miller has already produced Percy MacKaye's "Mater" and it is his hope to give it before the University audience in a short time.

The great significance of the production last night in Sanders Theatre, as Mr. Miller pointed out, is that it betokens the beginning of a closer relationship of our great universities to the professional drama. Mutual appreciation and sympathy will bring about an attitude conducive to uplift and to betterment of the undesirable in the theatrical world.

A notice of the performance would be incomplete without mention of the consummate skill and great delicacy shown by the actors in their readings of the lines. Mr. Miller was well suited by temperament for the part he has to play. Jessie Bonstelle as Rhoda showed a very sensitive comprehension of her character and succeeded in producing the illusion for us. The whole cast bore witness to most careful selection and training.

The play, since its first production, has been rearranged. The first and second acts have been partially telescoped and the ending altered. Those changes not only make the play more effective for acting purposes but seem, psychologically, better. The "Faith Healer" is a notable advance upon Mr. Moody's earlier, excellent play, "The Great Divide." Even now he stands high among our dramatic writers: should he produce more plays, fulfilling the promise of these two, we may be certain of great drama