"B. J. ONE," Opening Tonight in Brattle Hall, is Previewed as Attack on Suicidal Competition of Steel Companies

The following preview of "B. J. One," the current Harvard Dramatic Club production which will open this evening at Brattle Hall, was written for the Harvard Crimson by W. E. Harris '20, former member of the Boston Transcript staff, and newspaper critic.

In "B. J. One," the British naval war play, the Harvard Dramatic Club has made an interesting choice for its spring production, which opens tonight in Brattle Hall. As a highly experimental drama not yet performed on the American professional stage although an outstanding hit in London it lives up to the best interpretation of the Club's experimental policy.

With America suffering from the effects of a world-wide depression, the production of "B. J. One" takes on the timeliness of a newspaper's extra edition. For Stephen King-Hall's play deals with the suicidal competition of great national steel companies geared up to the highest possible output by the World War.

The friendship of two young officers, Sub-Lieutenant Westley of the British Navy, and Karl von Malheim, holding a similar post in the German navy, carries the story-thread from a night club in Kiel shortly before the war to the bridge of a British cruiser in the Battle of Jutland, and thence to the post-war office of a steel magnate. Inheriting their respective fathers' businesses, these two represent the curious and tense struggle between the cooperation of systematically-conducted navies and the individualistic philosophy of modern business. In the last act the two forces come to grips.

The graphic scene on the forebridge of a light cruiser during a night engagement is however, one of the most interesting aspects of "B. J. One," As the war in "Journey's End" was fought in terms of a front-line dug-out, so here we see the sounds, confusion and terrible effects of battle on the high seas. By the use of intricate lighting and other unusual devices an expert dramatist attempts to depict life among perhaps the most starting conditions the machine age has yet evoked. "B. J. One" will lay heavy and thrilling demands upon not only the Dramatic Club's mechanical staff, but also the imagination of the spectators.