New Play in Manhattan

Paradise Lost (by Clifford Odets; Group Theatre, producer) is Opus No. 4 in the collected works of a young man who is currently the U. S. Drama's white-haired boy. With two one-acters (Waiting for Lefty, Till the Day I Die) and one full-length play (Awake and Sing!) behind him within a twelvemonth, with his ears ringing with more critical praise than many an older playwright has achieved in a full career, 29-year-old Clifford Odets undertook to explain to metropolitan critics just what his latest play was about. On the eve of Paradise Last's premiere he announced that the hero of his play was "the entire American middle-class of liberal tendency."

"The characters are bewildered," continued Mr. Odets. "The best laid plans go wrong. The sweetest human impulses are frustrated. No one leads a normal life here, and every decent tendency finds its complement in sterility and futility. Our confused middle-class today, which dares little, is dangerously similar to Chekhov's people. Which is why the people in Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost (particularly the latter) have what is called a 'Chekhovian quality.' Which is why it is so sinful to violate their lives and aspirations with plot lines. Plots are primer stuff, easily learned."

Impressed by Mr. Odets' previous work, and his audacity in bracketing himself with the late great Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, reviewers settled in their seats at Paradise Lost ready for almost anything. When they rose after the final curtain, none could deny that plenty had happened. Ben Gordon, an Olympic runner, marries a wench who betrays him, gets shot in a holdup. His brother Julie takes three acts to die of sleeping sickness. His sister

Pearl, in love with a musician who cannot afford to marry her, draws solace from her piano until that, too, is taken from her. Leo Gordon, father of this unhappy brood, is a dreamy designer of pocketbooks whose partner is revealed in rapid succession as a brutal exploiter of his workers, an incipient firebug, an absconder. Half a dozen other characters in Paradise Lost do not get along well either. Nevertheless, Leo Gordon is able to say in a full-length curtain speech that everything is going to be all right now that they have all hit hard pan. "The world's at its morning!" declares Leo.

A onetime actor himself, Playwright Odets instinctively loaded his show with the sort of scenes that are ice cream & cake to most mimes. Stella Adler, as Gordon's wife, gets a chance to knock down her brother, Luther Adler, who plays the part of Gordon's partner. Brother Luther thereupon throws a fit. Somebody else knocks down the boy playing brother Ben. The Gordons' Communist furnace man goes around shouting questionable blank verse and has the opportunity to throw a wine glass at a radio during an Armistice Day program. In addition to the sleeping sickness victim there is still another very juicy part, that of an eccentric family friend who totters about muttering significant irrelevancies. He supplies most of the "Chekhovian quality."

Lest they be accused of critical sabotage in the interests of the "corrupt capitalist press," Manhattan's reviewers habitually bend over backward to give radical drama the best possible marks. The case of Paradise Lost was no exception. Unanimously Mr. Odets was again declared to be the most promising playwright in the land. Again he got generous credit for his ability to stoke up steam under dramatic situations, explode them in fine style. Praised, too, was Mr. Odets' peculiar vulgate in which a girl is a "squab" or a "melon," thoughts are sometimes articulated by the titles of popular songs and a state of amorous infatuation occurs when "the little love bugs get into you." The play as a play, however, critics unanimously found confused, pretentious, empty. Mr. Odets was fervently wished better luck next time.

That was not nearly enough for Mr. Odets' associates, the Group Theatre. To make sure that Paradise Lost was kept afloat, the organization put on an extraordinary campaign, buying newspaper space to testify:

THE GROUP HAS FAITH IN

PARADISE LOST

And another broadside went out to metropolitan critics:

"The Group does not think it necessary to maintain that Paradise Lost is a 'perfect' play. . . . We believe that . . . the least that one might expect is a clear-cut statement to the effect that every sensitive theatregoer must by all means see it."

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