Percy Beaumont Wadsworth

“ The Land of Many Names is pure Expressionism. A new continent has arisen out of the sea and a capitalist, Dollarson, taking advantage of the general desire to escape from this crumbling Europe, starts a company to colonize it. There is a war to decide the ownership of the new land, and after allowing itself to be conquered, it very inconsiderately sinks under the sea again. The moral of the play is contained in a speech by one of the characters, Pieris, a poet, who cries out that here, beneath our feet, is the new Land of Hopes. ”

“ Czecho-Slovakia is a small nation that has gained its national freedom through the force of exterior circumstances; a small nation attempting to build a political structure that will consolidate that freedom. It is a small nation eager to take its place in the sun and perhaps almost losing its soul in the process. ”

“ Land of Hopes, New Paradise, Land of Plenty, New Utopia, New Zion, Land of the Strong, Land of Marx, Land of Lenin, and a dozen others. But man is not to find his soul in the search for desired possessions or pilgrimages to new lands with new names. ”

“ It grew out of the common mood that accompanied the various revolutions and revolts that took place in the Teutonic countries, bringing the masses and the barricades on to the stage. It deals almost exclusively with man as a social and a political animal, although at times the individual soul stalks nakedly through the general disorder. ”

“ The Upheaval, an extraordinarily ambitious attempt on the part of a Czech dramatist, Stanislav Lom, to make a convincing play out of the events which led up to the bloodless Revolution which brought Czecho-Slovakia into being at the end of the War. ”

“ On the other hand there are writers who seem to follow no traditional path; writers who do not wish to conserve the past. They step out into the future with nothing more to guide them than a simple faith in life. This faith, clear-running as a brook, is the secret of the success of the dramas by the two brothers, Karel and Joseph Capek.
Karel Capek is the author of The Robber, R. U. R., The Macropolus Affair; Joseph Capek collaborated with his brother in The World We Live In, and is also the author of The Land of Many Names, a new play produced this month. ”

“ Its people seem condemned by some compelling external force to ape the despised vulgarity of the greater nations. They contain within themselves the seed of a new bourgeoisie that may take the place of the old aristocratic Austria of which they were part. All these questions, and many more, are lying ready to hand for the Czech dramatist as subjects for large treatment and courageous handling, and we may therefore expect to find a special form of the Expressionist drama growing and flourishing side by side with the advance of the new republic. ”

“ They refuse to read the writing on the wall; unwilling to believe in a passing of our slowly-gathered culture. They resolutely affirm their belief in the spiritual goodness in man, attempting, where possible, to salvage what remains of that traditional culture. ”

“ This type of play acts far better than it reads. It is written for the stage and certainly not for the study. The looseness of its structure gives an incredible amount of freedom to the dramatist who can throw in any characters he likes, they may be as real as the people we meet in the street, or as fantastic as his imagination may wish them to be. Coarse everyday slang follows poetical speech; passages that are reminiscent of the best parts of the Bible merge into the obscenities that accompany a street-brawl. Crowds of people rush in and out ”