New Play in Manhattan

The Moon Is Down (by John Steinbeck; produced by Oscar Serlin). Primarily intended for the stage, The Moon Is Down was first rigged up as a novel (TIME, March 9), and inside five weeks sold almost half a million copies. Theoretically the tailor-made play should beat the makeshift novel all hollow; actually it can't come near it. Steinbeck's fable of how some unnamed but obviously Nazi invaders take over an unlocalized but obviously Norwegian mining town, meet with icy resistance and are themselves worn down, never really comes to life in the theater.

Part of the blame lies in the production's slow-footed pace, heavy-handed direction, weak acting. But part of the trouble is the play itself. The dialogue, more like subdued rhetoric than human talk, often seems stilted and formal when spoken aloud. The play lacks sustained action and commits the dramatic crime of having almost everything exciting take place offstage. Finally, though the townspeople's heroic resolution is made clear, their flesh-&-blood sufferings are not.

Nevertheless the play, like the novel, should provoke a hot debate as to how sound, and how salutary, is Steinbeck's thesis: that a free people cannot be conquered. Heartening and lofty though this message may be, right now it can also be over-reassuring to a still-too-optimistic U.S. If Steinbeck is civilized enough to make his Nazis human beings rather than monsters, he is naive enough to picture them as weak, unable to stand up to a cold shoulder. In defeat, the Nazis will probably crack up in a hurry; but there are no grounds for supposing that they go to pieces in victory.

Steinbeck's already famous phrase, "The flies have conquered the flypaper," is a memorable slogan and, taking a very long view, a valid observation. But in terms of here & now, it has still to be proved.

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