Death by Ibsenitis

For years, dedicated drama lovers have been bemoaning the decline of the U.S. theater. They have watched the number of legitimate playhouses in Manhattan drop from 75-odd (in 1929) to 32 (in 1955), and have seen the once heavy traffic in road companies dwindle to a mere trickle. Some would agree with New York Herald Tribune Drama Critic Walter Kerr's acid contention that "nobody--but nobody--is willing to subject himself to any contemporary theatrical experience he can get out of," but many may be jolted by Critic Kerr's current diagnosis of the ailment.

Not Good Enough. The slow strangulation of the theater, says Kerr in a witty, solidly documented new book, How Not to Write a Play (Simon & Schuster; $3.50), cannot be blamed on the economy or war or television or the movies--and least of all, on the low taste of the public. The real trouble lies with the plays themselves: "The audience has not deserted us because we were too good for it, but because we were not good enough."

The trouble started, Kerr thinks, nearly 80 years ago, when Ibsen, later abetted by Shaw and Chekhov, renounced melodrama and fancy-dress intrigues and ushered in a drama of photographic realism and socially significant content directed at an audience of intellectuals. Like any fresh theatrical cycle, Critic Kerr feels, the one Ibsen introduced gave new vitality to the stage of its time, but unlike the Greek or Elizabethan cycles, it reached its height in its originators, and has long since outlived its original artistic impulse: "The best new brains are feeding on dead tissue."

In concentrating on literal settings and social messages, Ibsen's and Chekhov's disciples have slighted theme, plot, character development and language--the things that gave the theater popular appeal--and have produced a theater suffering from "muscular atrophy" and conditioned by the idea that the playwright, and not his audience, knows what makes good drama. ("The playwright no longer has to die to reach Parnassus. He starts out there.")

A Robust Experience. For artistic as well as economic reasons, it is high time, says Kerr, a playwright himself (Sing Out, Sweet Land!), that playwrights start to relearn what their audiences prefer: "No great play has ever come from what might be called a minority theater . . . The presence of the uncultivated mass ... is an indispensable prerequisite for drama of genuine stature ... At worst, the popular theater holds the fort; at best, it finds its way to Hamlet"

To lure back their audiences, says Kerr, modern playwrights must offer them once again "a robust and companionable outsized experience," full of sound, color, movement, conflict, and the "sort of magical speech" which can best be achieved in verse. ("Every major serious play--and the lion's share of the comedies--that we cling to out of the past are verse plays.")

None of this will be accomplished easily or quickly, Kerr predicts. But unless a start is made by the younger playwrights, "the theater as we know it may cease to function entirely."

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