No Tovarich

SERVICE ENTRANCE--Kyra Gorlfzina--Carrick & Evans ($2.50).

Author Kyra Goritzina and her husband, Sergei, are White emigres from Russia, where they "lost nearly all that is dear to anyone--country, home, family, wealth and social standing." Soon as they arrived in the U. S., in 1923, Sergei was offered a $250-a-week job as an actor, in Mowris Gest's pantomime, The Miracle. But he quit during rehearsals. To him and his wife the play was "sheer blasphemy," its point appalling and incomprehensible. They found it hard to believe that "the Mother of God would deceive people just to protect the sins of a nun." The Goritzins, who spoke emigre English, had a hard time finding another job, finally drifted into domestic service.

Kyra Goritzina quotes Thackeray: "Lucky is the man whose servant speaks well of him." In Service Entrance she speaks well of only two of the nine households in which she and Sergei worked. Mr. Pettyjohn (she names no real names), a socialite banker, was agreeable despite the fact that he tested his servants by scattering cigar ashes in out-of-the-way spots. Mrs. Lowell was kind, looked after the Goritzins in illness, raised their wages to $200 a month, reluctantly let them go when she moved into a house that was too big for them to manage. The rest of Service Entrance is a chronicle--somewhat humorless, written in upstairs rather than backstairs English--of abuse, exploitation, wretched servants' quarters, meals on leftovers, petty impositions, large-scale cheating. (Young Mr. Carter, a febrile, Napo-Iconic financier, was the most egregious character of the lot: though he was rich enough to keep a yacht, he diddled the Goritzins out of $1,200 in wages and loans.)

Kyra Goritzina was aware of the parallel between her lot and that of the White Russian aristocrats-turned-servants in Tovarich, which she saw in the movies and did not like. The Goritzins had their chance at a Tovarich performance when, working for a consul general in Manhattan, they were told that some "Red Commissars" were coming for lunch. The Goritzins took that day off, went to the movies.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.