PLAY BY MEMBER OF 47 WORKSHOP PRAISED BY NEW YORK REVIEWERS

The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City is now giving, as its final production of the year, "Makers of Light", a realistic tragedy of New England life by Frederic Lansing Day 3G. of Boston. Day, who is at present a member of English 47a, wrote the play for that course and it was first staged in two private performances in the 47 Workshop on November 25 and 26 of last year.

The following quotations are taken from reviews of the play printed by three New York papers.

From the New York Evening Post, May 25:

The play itself--a product of Professor Baker's Harvard Workshop--though bearing many marks of inexperience, has some decided merits which justify the expectation of still better work from the author in the near future. If in a good many of its details it is more suggestive of clever moulding upon established modes than of original invention, the main theme is fresh and timely, is worked out with considerable ingenuity and a clear sense of dramatic situation up to the final climax and catastrophe, which are fairly logical, if not altogether convincing or inevitable.

On the whole this is a play which is well entitled to production and, perhaps, to a better one than it has yet received.

From the New York World, May 25:

Its strength is in the keen delineation of character and in the general crispness and in the general crispness and frequency cleverness of its dialogue. Last night's players made the most of these particulars. Indeed, there were those present at the performance, regular followers of the Neighborhood programmes, who declared that the Playhouse had never had a presentation more generally satisfying.

"Makers of Light" is a product straight from Harvard's famous English 47. It had two special performances at the Workshop in Cambridge and was received with acclaim by the specialists there assembled: From the New York Times, May 25:

Those who go down to Grand street to see the final production of the season at the Neighborhood Playhouse, which had its first showing last night, will find a play so vigorous, so relentless in its determination to picture life, that they are almost certain either to have a positive opinion about it, one way or another. They are not likely to leave it lukewarm.

So you see, the play is strong. But it is true. It may go further than its corresponding situation of real life goes, as a rule, and its character may be more sharply drawn than their actual counterparts, but fundamentally, in the situation out of which the tragedy grows and in the main lines of its characters, it is true. And it is true, too, in its utter hopelessness. It is as hopeless as life is--as life often is, anyhow. It does not end. It does not reach any solution, or even settlement of its problem. The curtain simply comes down on hopelessness. The only important point in which the play does not seem thus fundamentally true is in the emphasis it puts upon underpayment as the cause of the destruction of the lives of Millvale's school teachers. Underpayment, beyond a doubt, is a contributing cause. But there's much more to the problem presented than that.