'John Brown's Body," Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem, which Charles Laughton has adapted and directed and Paul Gregory presents at the Century, is a worthy, distinguished successor to "Don Juan in Hell."

Mr. Laughton constantly emphasizes respect for the spoken word. This work is staged so nothing interferes with the poet's phrases, in their primary function of inciting you, the listener, to create image after image for you own.

Without the novelty "Don Juan" had, the new work is distinct extension of the same enterprising method. The Shaw was a poetic presentment of a play. This is the theatrical tender of a poem. It is proposed by Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey.

Put Before the Eyes

With poetry, music and actor at their most magical, you are enthralled. When, for instance, Miss Anderson completes the passage about the burning mansion, it is an efforts to admit no such house or fire was there before the Civil War, surging with historic crises, and relating intimate tales of combatants' ruptured lives. There is a Rebel romance and a Union romance, whole families recur, and passing figures are glimpsed. Then there are the giants, Lincoln and Lee and the other generals.

The stage is imaginatively simple, its stark detail picked out in scarlet lines. On one side are bleachers for the singing chorus, which never appears in full light. Three microphones are down stage, in front of a red-topped railing.

The three stars move in and out of the floodlit area around the mikes. They rest against the rail, pass behind it, or progress from one phone to another. At one great climax, Mr. Power treats the rail as a ridge of land to give physical scope to his stirring description of a battle.

Applause rarely breaks the poem. At the close of a long passage about Lincoln, Mr. Massey got a big inevitable hand at the premier, though the scene is scarcely more moving or ingeniously acted than the one in which he makes the aloof Lee a man of warm marble.

The premier, exciting enough, was by no means the smoothest or hottest show the troupe has given or will give. Premier exigencies only honed the keen performance of Walter Schumann's brilliant illustrative music, which backs the poem, or takes it over in chorales.

Dramatic Chills

The night's dramatic chills, warmth and penetration are most often Miss Anderson's. With tender beauty, and incomparable plastic and vocal range she makes pure experience of the girl's love affair and motherhood and the iron fragility of the Southern lady.

Mr. Power has relaxed solemnity, intenseness and the dynamic excitement for widely varied effects. He realizes a sensuous spell in the dreamy description of the hot Georgia countryside, and later makes the battle explode.

Mr. Massey's quiet, polished perfection allows contrasts as strong as that between clabber and sorghum. Hs slack-jawed house slave, and the mighty, humble Lincoln are opposite poles of the actor's part.

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Charles Laughton's genius for putting the theater to unorthodox uses has brought him another stunning success. It was Mr. Laughton, working with producer Paul Gregory, who conceived and directed last season's eye-opener, "Don Juan in Hell." This time he has moved away from the drama proper, taken up Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem, "John Brown's Body," and filled the reaches of the Century with its rolling rhythms.

In the nature of things, this new experiment cannot have the electrifying tension of Shaw's exhilarating debate. It is largely narrative, rather than dialogue meant to strike vocal fire; it is a vast panorama made of fragmentary pieces; it has no natural theatrical climaxes.

Yet adapter Laughton, with the energetic assistance of Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey and a beautifully trained choir of twenty voices, has infused it with a whole landscape of lively stage images. The principals have only three microphones, a few occasional chairs, and a single evocative balustrade to work with. But Lincoln pacing his retreat at Soldiers' Home, battling it out with his puzzling God, and falling to his knees in anguish becomes a graphic and moving reality. So does a proud and spirited Southern hostess as she watches a cherished way of life turn to dust at her feet. A looting member of Sherman's army, shouting his way through the echoing halls of a deserted mansion, is far more vividly realized than he might have been had the scenic warehouses been ransacked for literal props. Better still, Laughton and effects master Walter Schumann have generated astonishing momentum with their choral orchestration. They have found illustrative color everywhere: in the cacophony of a parade, in the musical flight of giggling debutantes at a house party, in the eerie overtones of an exhausted soldier's nightmare. And they have gone beyond simple illustration into exciting antiphonal clash. As the principals, lament the failure of armies to arise ("Nothing is changed, John Brown") the chorus begins to beat out, and build to a hushed crescendo, the assertive strains of the Battle Hymn. The gay instrumentation of a Southern ball is set against the principals' disturbed intuition that "This is the last." The hooting charge of the Southern armies at Gettysburg offers tingling contrast to the muted, tense, last-minute reflections f a Northern rifleman.

Over and above these melodic duels, the trio of stars create a gallery of defined and moving characters. If Tyrone Power has the most congenial assignments, he also makes the most of them. Mr. Power is simultaneously cast as the Northern recruit, Jack Elliot, and the rebel aristocrat, Clay Wingate, parts which require of him no more than his normal range. But he displays a surprising theatrical presence, and elert and kinetic responsiveness to the moods of the Benet poem. He seizes upon a physical sensation, a prod in the back from an enemy guard, the slight of a dead cat on the road back from Bull Runn, and gives it acute and compelling intensity. When he looks at a night sky, the sky is there; when he stares out at onrushing lines of gray, you share his apprehension.

Judith Anderson carries long section of the narrative with magnificent variety. She has been given the evening's most fragmentary roles, but she outlines a defiant Northern mother who has dared to pray for John Brown with swift precision; she sketches in the somewhat truncated story of Sally Dupre with angry fire and her dimensional portrait of the Yankee-hating, God-admonishing Mary Lou Wingate is a memorable blend of irony and understanding.

Raymond Massey brings clarity and simplicity to Benet's affecting speculation on the mystery of Lee, and he is, to the surprise of no one at this late date, a deeply touching Lincoln.

Not all the devices which an ingenious director and inventive company have lavished on "John Brown's Body" are wholly successful. There are, it must be confessed, self-conscious moments. The opening postures are so severely formalized as to suggest a peculiarly rigid graduation exercise. Some of the had-props, notable an old family album, are awkwardly introduced and distractingly dwelt on. The last third of the evening would profit from further cutting. But neither the occasional affectation nor the final overlength do serious damage to an exceptionally interesting lyric adventure.

It is an old and largely forgotten literary notion that epic poetry was meant to be read aloud. "John Brown's Body" is being given a mellow and magical reading at the Century.

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Although Stephen Vincent Benet wrote "John Brown's Body" for readers, it is a piece of vivid theater now. For the reading that Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey and Tyrone Power installed at the Century Saturday evening is a stage performance of fire and beauty. The Benet poem preserves the darkest, most agonizing of the American memories when two parts of the nations hunted and shot at each other for four bloody years. Charles Laughton's stage adaptation has reduced a long epic to tractable size; and with the accompaniment of a chorus, it brings us words that sing and images that can be acted. Like the "Don Juan in Hell" reading of last season, the "John Brown's Body" production refreshes the whole conception of theatre.

Benet published his epic in 1928. It won the Pulitzer Prize the next year and is now a part of American lore as fundamental as Whitman. Reared in a family of military tradition, Benet was steeped in the military history of the civil War. He knew, not only the campaigns, but the personalities and the abilities of the commanders on both sides, as well as the native temperament of the troops.

As a poet he knew more. Heknew and loved the fields and the woods, the leaves and flowers, the sounds and odors, the textures of the seasons. And to him the Civil War was not an isolated incident in American history but a wildness in the heart of America'savage and desperate on both sides but also an expression of pride and conviction. In a series of poems written in various forms and running to 377 pages in the original edition, he told the homely story of a terrible ordeal without heroics or sanctimoniousness. Although it fascinated him, it also widened and deepened his fund of compassion.

Presented as a kind of elegant Chautauqua reading, the stage version dispenses with the usual paraphernaalia of the theatre. Miss Anderson wears a pastel yellow evening gown. Mr. Massey and Mr. Power are in evening dress. The mean and women of the chorus are also formally attired. But for all its visual austerity, this is a production, and a brilliant one. Behind the microphones there is a balustrade with a red top that serves as a bench where the actors can sit or lounge; and in the shadows on either wing there are red-topped chairs for the chorus or for the actors to retire to when they have a breathing spell.

The performance looks informal. In fact, it is occasionally quite informal; and, if you want to be captious about it, a bit too informal in the first act. Now and then the actors step out of character and affect a personal relation to each other as if they were human beings. Well, they are human beings, of course. But in "John Brown's Body" they are spokesmen for many characters and prophets of destiny, bigger than life, detached from society.

Mr. Laughton's direction is shrewd. It varies pleasantly the task of reciting a long narrative by giving fragments of it to each of the actors, removing them from the playing area at intervals and enriching the performance with evocative choral music as the evening progresses the tempo quickens and the performance rushes toward a dramatic climax. In the second act, it also gives each of the actors at least one highly dramatic scene. The are wonderful actors. In the theater we are happily familiar with Miss Anderson's depth and range and Mr. Massey's spiritual exaltation. Both of them have scenes that are tremendously moving, brief but penetrating and passionate.

Theatregoers in New York are less familiar with Mr. Power's capacity for acting in person on the stage. Let it be said at once that he is worthy of the company he keeps. For he, too, acts with candor, skill and understanding; and he can play a big scene with the authority of an actor who has mastered it selflessly. The ballads and spirituals, composed by Walter Schumann, bring a touch of musical grandeur to the performance; and the severe beauty of the choral singing is an integral part of this imaginatively planned performance.

"John Brown's Body" is a work of art, no only in print, but in the theatre. It tells the truth about some anguished years that will always burden the soul of America.

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In "John Brown's Body," Stephen Vincent Benet penned an epic poem about the Civil War. Starting with the fanatical Brown's abortive revolt to abolish slavery, Benet, throughout a number of characters, etched an amazingly comprehensive picture of that tragic conflict, its antecedents and results.

He wrote the poem because he had to,"on a fellowship in Paris" with little thought in mind of financial reward. His compelling urge and personal courage paid off handsomely, for he returned to America to find his book a Pulitzer Prize winner and a best seller. It was a truly magnificent drama for the library.

HAVING DEVISED a new method for projecting G. B. Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell" last season, the versatile Charles Laughton applied the technique with further innovations, to the presentation on stage of "John Brown's Body." In addition to having players in evening dress read the script, Laughton has added dancers and a chorus.

In "Don Juan," impresario Paul Gregory had Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead to speak the play. Now, he has Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey interpreting Benet's epic. With eloquence and remarkable dramatic impact, each recreates several characters and emphasizes the philosophy inherent in the work.

Director Laughton has given the more powerful episodes to Power and Massey. There are those who think most film stars are not up to the technical demands of the theater, but they forget that Power comes from a line of fine actors. His depiction of soldier caught in the horrors at Gettysburgh stirred the first nighters at the Century Theatre to cheers.

HAVING SCOREDperhaps his greatest triumph in Robert E. Sherwood's "Abe Lincoln in Illinois," Raymond Massey inevitably was given the passages devoted to the harassed President's anxieties, hopes and eventual triumph. With forceful but beautifully controlled acting, he held the audience spellbound.

Miss Anderson is a dynamic actress. She can ring the rafters when she chooses, but last evening she drew her characters with admirable restraint and telling effect.

Richard Whites chorus worked wonders with Walter Schumann's musical score and sound effects. The signers were reminiscent of a Greek chorus, abetting and highlighting the drama.

"John Brown's Body" has the virtue of improving as it progresses. It gains in stature and intensity until it reaches an emotional crescendo. It proves that outstanding players need only a handful of props, a few microphones, canny lighting and a masterly script to provide an evening of exciting and rewarding theatre.

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Paul Gregory, of Oklahoma and California, is the newest and youngest of a long like of impresarios to discover that there are priceless pearls in culture. His "John Brown's Body," which was offered last Saturday evening at the Century Theatre, is a showmanlike descendant of such increments to American education as the lectures of Dickens and Wilde, the dedicated tent shows of the Chautauaqua Circuit and the ladies' club bookings of such managers as Clark H. Getts.

If you are looking for culture with a capital K, and if you aren't your wife probably is, I can recommend "John Brown's Body" without reserve and with infinite enthusiasm. Here is a splendid recitation of a Pulitzer prize-winning complete history of the civil War, in poetry, by the late Stephen Vincent Benet. There can be no better reciters than Tyrone Power, Raymond Massey and Judith Anderson, and they are aided by the best mixed chorus since the Hall Johnson choir made its magnificent contribution to "The Greek Pastures."

Not Too Exciting

If, on the other hand, you are looking for a nap and not for culture, I still can recommend "John Brown's Body." The Century Theatre's seats are quite comfortable and the words of the poem are beautiful and soothing. Culture-hound though I am, it was only duty which kept me from dozing through a large part of the artistically elaborate and physically uninteresting proceedings on Saturday evening.

Last year Gregory struck a Comstock Lode when he offered, without scenery, a recitation by Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke, Charles Boyer and Agnes Moorehead of Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell," which is the leftover act from "The Devil's Disciple." Naturally interested in a business which required so little overhead (the show could blow one town and move to the next in four suitcases), Gregory has pursued it farther and has produced "John Brown's Body" with a cast of three and three microphones. The chorus is an extra added attraction (and very, very good, with some fascinating arrangements and vocal effects by Walter Schuman). On the road, the show has been an artistic and financial sensation exceeding "Don Juan in Hell."

A Theatrical Stunt.

In New York, "John Brown's Body" strikes me as being a synthesized trick. If you grant (and this I will debate) that Benet's poem is great, it still is a poem. It wasn't written for the theatre, but for reading in print. No matter how well Charles Laughton, the director, has tricked it up by assigning this passage to Mr. Massey, that one to Mss Anderson and another to Mr. Power, and no matter how eloquently they speak the lines, this work is better in the library than it is on the stage.

The three speakers of this poetical history are excellent. Massey is at his best, of course, when a passage of the poem involves Abraham Lincoln and he can go into a well-tried characterization. Miss Anderson is, as always, imperious, grand and slightly forbidding when it comes her turn to declaim. Best of the trio tome is Tyrone Power, who much not be dismissed as a Hollywood glamor boy. His great-grandfather was an actor and he is too; and he has a magnificent voice which he uses to talk the pure, unaffected and really beautiful American language.

"John Brown's Body" is high-minded and well done. But it serves to remind me that the theatre is a place for things theatrical.

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The "reading" of Stephen Vincent Benet's celebrated Civil War poem, "John Brown's Body," which had its first Manhattan presentation at the Century Theater Saturday night, is a stirring and impressive dramatic event. If it necessarily lacks the novelty of the similar treatment of "Don Juan in Hell" last season, as well as the welcome sharpness of Shaw's penetrating wit, it is nevertheless eloquent and moving. Possibly this specialized method of offering classics to playgoers may pall eventually, but it still offers fresh theatrical excitement, particularly with such "readers" as Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey.

The multitudes that were delighted by "Don Juan in Hell" will not require a long explanation as to how the staging is managed. As with the First Drama Quartet, the performers, in evening clothes, stand before microphones, and I still find myself resenting those microphones. But this time they are also provided with a sort of fence, and they are placed on one side of the stage, for the presentation of "John Brown's Body," has elaborations of its own. There is a choral group of 20, as well as two soloists and two dancers, and songs and sound effects have been added to the star trio's dramatic recitation.

The Heroes

The Benet poem has, of course, come to be accepted as an American classic, and not on its beauty and eloquence, but also the epic sweep that the author got into his long poetic narrative, make its claim to the title entirely understandable when it is presented dramatically. As a newcomer to the work, I found it considerable less interesting in its personal story that in its evocation of heroic history and its vivid recreation of the gigantic figures of Lincoln, Lee and John Brown, but this is assuredly not surprising. Benet's soldier and his southern aristocrats face impossible opposition in such mighty men.

There are two particularly high points in the epic narrative, and they are superbly done. Raymond Massey, who has had no little experience with Abraham Lincoln, magnificently manages a long soliloquy of the most touching of American heroes and brings him to life movingly and compassionately, while Tyrone Power tells of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg with all the brilliant skill of a highly accomplished actor. Judith Anderson has no show piece as thrilling as either of these two stirring episodes, but she, too, brings to the reading her distinguished forcefulness and strength.

Tyrone Power

All three of them seem to me of enormous help in making the poem live in dramatic terms, but I think it is Mr. Power who s the revelation of "John Brown's Body." Because he has had such sketchy stage experience and is known chiefly for his playing of dashing romantic roles on the screen, I, for one, was not prepared for the remarkable ability, resourcefulness, intelligence and versatility he reveals as an actor. He is excellent throughout the evening and, when he comes to his big scene, he demonstrates clearly that he deserves his stardom because he knows how to act, not because he is a handsome leading man.

Since he has the episodes dealing with Lincoln, Lee and Brown, and, in particular, that memorable Lincoln soliloquy, I suppose Mr. Massey is the most fortunate member of the cast, and since the scenes dealing with the women are the least interesting, I should say Miss Anderson has the least rewarding task. But this is certainly not to dispute the value of her contribution to the presentation. The danger of this type of stage "reading" is that it grow pompous and pretentious, but this peril is happily avoided. A word should be said for the work of the choral group. "John Brown's Body" provides a distinguished evening.

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Last year a young man named Paul Gregory made the startling discovery tat a great many citizens were prepared to pay fancy prices to witness good performers reading memorable literature on a bare sage, with microphones. This year he has pressed on with the same idea, employing Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey and a choral group to tell the story of the Civil War.

His present venture, which opened at the New Century Theater the other night, is a recital of "John Brown's Body," by Stephen Vincent Benet. They do it wonderfully well; the legend is exciting and informative; you will be rewarded. Benet tells the story of the Civil War through the eyes of a typical Northerner and Southerner. The Three stars make turns at the mike, sometimes alone, sometimes together.

Raymond Massey has quite a long stretch while he gives you the emotional conflict of Abraham Lincoln, who despairs at the bloodshed yet is dedicated to the cause; Power has his moment in the sun when he enacts the role of a Unionist resisting the last desperate charge at Gettysburg; Miss Anderson verbally portrays the anguish of childbirth.

All this with appropriate accompaniment from the choral group, occupied most of the time chanting "John Brown's Body is A-Mouldering."

Toast to Power

However stylized, this brings the Civil War close to anyone's kin. Here one feels the fierce cleavage between the two protagonists, the hunger and travail of the Army of Virginia, the confusions and misdirection of the hordes from the North. And, finally, the personalized moments of Gen. Lee's surrender.

It seemed to me that the most forceful episode of the evening were the purely historical ones; I failed to become engrossed with the incidental love story. The people involved never assumed realistic dimesnion, proving that there is just so much you can do with a mike and a chorus.

Of the three principals, all eminent, one must propose a small toast to Tyrone Power, who succeeds in holding his as the single emissary from Hollywood. Here he is, surrounded by two valedictorians from the stage, and he comes away with the colors flying. He is able to match them in poise and performance.

One thing I don't like; the entire production is built around microphones, these three gaunt spires toward which all the speeches are delivered. The players are true professionals and it should not be such a great chore to project their normal voices into the cheap seats. In its present form the proceedings assume the pattern of a radio broadcast.

But that doesn't really matter. The fact is you'll like "John Brown's Body."

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This column finally got around toe "John Brown's Body" one night last week. Having bee considerably less than enthusiastic about "Don Juan in Hell" in contract to everyone else, it was with mixed emotions that we approached the Century Theater. For my money I prefer the dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem by a distinguished group of stars who can read aloud and interestingly. The use of a singing and speech choir gave considerable beauty to the evening and Mr. Charles Laughton's limited staging was considerably more dramatic than his sing-song arrangement of the Shaw drama. However, I can't go along with all this return to mid-Victorianism in public reading of plays and poetry, or even the flavorsome stories of Charles Dickens. I like to see a play acted on the stage more than anything else no matter how great the literature being read, theoretically is.

Tyrone Power, of course, stole the evening. He has been in Hollywood so long, with only an appearance in the summer at Westport to prove that he can be a round actor too, that he has become a myth without ever having been an actuality on the stage as was his father. Therefore to discover he is really a good actor comes as a revelation and a pleasing one to. Now that the films have made him many times a millionaire couldn't he be persuaded to return to New York? It didn't appreciate him in his salad days but let him show us in new plays and classics that he has become an even better actor than his father and is a return to the greatness of his great-grandfather, the first Tyrone Power.

Judith Anderson, looking more beautiful and seductive than ever, finds her glorious voice to some of Benet's lines but she is called on toe recreate so many potential roles foreign to her in time and in sex that it is a wonder she survives. Imitating a certain kind of Southern speech is almost impossible to one not born there despite the tours de force effected by Vivien Leigh in "Gone with the Wind", Jessica Tandy in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Gertrude Lawrence in her cinematic exploration of a Tennesse Williams Southern heroine.

The late great Laurette Taylor, born Laura Cooney and a stock star in Washington in the early years of this century, triumphed in "The Glass Menagerie." Naturally she was attuned to Southern speech patterns but she revealed the immediate reasons for her success as the mother in Tennessee Williams' beautiful play at the New York Drama Critics' Circle dinner to honor the author. "With that Darling little Tennessee on one side and that Darling Little Margo (Miss Jones was co-director of the play), on the other side, how could I fail?" Miss Anderson hasn't failed but if she had a Southern "darling" on either side, it would have helped.

Ths certainly is true of lanky, Canadian-born Raymond Massey who has his superb moments as Lincoln, but who is also called on to render some darky characters that sound a little as though they came out of an amateur performance of old-fashioned "negro minstrels." It was trying, to put it mildly. It was also confusing to require Mr. Power to impersonate the northern and southern heroes of this poem and to expect the audience to make the necessary adjustment.

Walter Schumann's music and effects worked extraordinarily well. Much of this honor should be shared with Richard White who functioned on stage and led the choir in masterful fashion. "John Brown's Body" closes April 11th. You will certainly not want to miss so exciting an evening of poetry recited in the theatre.

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It is quite likely that Paul Gregory's newest venture in producing dramatic readings will equal the popularity attained last year by his Drama Quartet. Turning from Shavian prose to Stephen Vincent Benet's poetry. Gregory has come up with something considerably more elaborate production-wise that the informal simplicity of the Quarter's reading of "Don Juan in Hell." This time his stars are a trio at the microphones and they are backed with an excellent choral group to chant music and sound effects gaited to the varying moods of Benet's epic of the Civil War, "John Brown's Body." The over-all, while it cannot be classed as entertainment, is stirring and stimulating. While this reporter responded more vigorously to "Don Juan," the poetic venture will doubtless attract a host of admirers.

Benet's poem projects a sort of vignette history of the Civil War as viewed by protagonists on both sides, somewhat in the manner of an excellent novel called "the Wave," written back in the '20s by an author whose name this reporter has forgotten. The three stars, Tyrone Power, Judith Anderson and Raymond Massey, either in turn or in unison, man the three mikes to provide a wide variety of portraits to form an over-all compelling picture. It is amazing what dynamic theater can be wrought sans scenery, lights and props.

Particularly notable in this experiment is the stand-out quality of Power's performance. After so many years before the cameras, it is surprising not only to find him holding his own with two such eminent stage veterans as Miss Anderson and Massey, but actually taking the play away from them on occasion. Massey, incidentally, gives his chores a really superb reading, and Miss Anderson, while occasionally given to over-exalted anguish, as usual, is one of our most brilliant players.

It appears that Charles Laughton has made a most sensitive adaptation of the Benet work, and has directed it brilliantly. Walter Schuman likewise rates a big hand for his choral arrangements and sounds effects which add so much to the proceedings.

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Last Sunday this column went on at some length about the theater's indifference to stage literature. "John Brown's Body," now installed at the Century, was not stage literature until Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey and Tyrone Power took hold of it. But it is stage literature now. It brings into the theatre the brooding beauty of a literary masterpiece.

Charles Laughton, the good genie of the dramatic reading, has culled it from the long epic poem that Stephen Vincent Benet wrote twenty-five years ago. Acted with conviction by some remarkable players, interwoven with some transcendent choral music, it not only makes an original piece of theatre but it expresses a noble point of view about America. For Stephen Benet perceived in the story of the Civil War the testing of the nation's should "in the strong mold of pain." Mr. Laughton's taste in literary masterpieces has not failed him in the reverence he discloses for Stephen Benet's sublime epic.

Edited Text

It is a long poem, 377 pages in the original edition. It would take seven hours to narrate the whole poem in the theatre. Editing it down to the conventional length of a theatrical performance, Mr. Laughton has tried to balance the experiences and thoughts of Jack Ellyat of the North against those of Clay Wingate of the South, both roughly representative of the two opposing tradition. Although a great mass of interesting and vigorous characters has had to be eliminated and even Ellyat and Wingate are only partly portrayed, the theatrical text does not violate the balance of the poem. In the end Wingate's pain is the grater. But Elyat also is worn and shattered by the brutishness of war.

As an American elegy "John Brown's Body" has one great source of strength: It is the work of a writer so familiar with the material that he could range through it at leisure. He did not have to weigh every fact cautiously. He wrote as though he were an extraordinarily well-informed contemporary who knew all the people that swept through the battles and who remembered all the details, the heat or rain, the color of the fields, the sounds of shot against bodies, the anxious thinking of the great men, the mournfulness of civilian life, the bitterness of the North, the hopefulness fortitude of the South. He gave the impression of recalling the war as a complex human experience in which people of all kinds participated, with an initial enthusiasm that subsided into weary resolution at the end.

A note in the back of the program explains his extraordinary grasp of he subject. He cam of a family that had had a long military tradition and that apparently talked continuously about campaigns and commanders. By the time he went to Neuilly in France on a Guggeneheim Fellowship to concentrate on writing the poem, he was thoroughly acquainted with the flamboyant character of Beuregard and the paradoxes of McClellan's hesitant leadership, and he understood the economic factors that stood like silent apertures behind the sweating armies in the field. He knew the war.

Writing in many contrasting verse form she then transmuted the basic material into an epic poem that interpreted the endless ordeal of America, out of John Brown's seminal rebellion into the exhausting struggles of the armies, and out of them into the materialistic power of America today. "Out of John Brown's strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow."

Muted Conclusion

If Stephen Benet had been a conventional poet, he would have concluded his epic with some triumphant expression to prove that this terrible war had been a success. Eve if the material did not justify such a conclusion, it would have been tempting to finish a fatiguing literary enterprise with something ringing and victorious, like a poetical bugle call.

Probably he was not even tempted. It is the measure of his stature as a poet that he did not take the easy way out. For he was not sure that the peace of Appomattox heralded the good, the true and the beautiful. He was not sure but that out of John Brown's moldering body came another evil that would enslave America with machines and steel and corrupt it with materialism.

In this respect he might have been encouraged by the simplicity of the stage performance of his poem. It is as pure as his own motives. It dispenses with thematerialistic opulence of the modern stage; the splendor of the performance derives solely from the writing, acting and singing. For this is fundamentally a reading, at once the oldest and newest production device. Last year's "Don Juan in Hell," with its panoply of stool, reading desks and scripts, was something of a stunt. The Shaw debate is a tour de force, and the eccentric form of the production suited the form of the material.

Since Mr. Laughton is artist as well showman, he has staged "John Brown's Body," in a somber style that becomes a tragic epic. As in the case of "Don Juan" reading, the actors are dressed in formal evening attire. But there is just a touch of production for this one; specifically a section of brown balustrade with a red bench top where the actors can rest, and a group of red-topped chairs where the men and women of the chorus sit among the shadows.

Mr. Laughton has relieved the bleakness of the performance by moving the actors around in an informal fashion. When Miss Anderson has a long speech, Mr. Power may leave the stage for a few moments and Mr. Massey may relax in one of the chairs outside the playing area. There are a number of effortless variations on this platform style of direction.

Although the poem, which was written for the printer and not for the actor, lacks dramatic form, Mr. Laughton has supplied one by deepening the intensity of the performance and raising the pitch in the second act. As the Civil War bites deeper into the life of the North and South, the performance becomes more fiercely dramatic, expressing horror, pity and doom. The actors are superb. Miss Anderson, our greatest tragic actress, gives a fiery performance in these climactic scenes. Mr. Massey and Mr. Power, both actors of force and incandescence, complement each other in drawing the male character portraits and in searching the hearts of soldiers, servants and statesmen.

Out of nothing but words, three inspired actors recreate a sorrowful interlude in our history. And the words are the music, sad and homely that Stephen Benet consecrated to the service of America.

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It would make me very happy if someone would think up a good, sensible name fore the method of staging that Charles Laughton, as director, and Paul Gregory, as producer, employed for "Don Juan in Hell" and re currently using at the Century Theatre for "John Brown's Body." I keep calling it a "reading" but that isn't strictly accurate, because the performers don't actually read from the script. Furthermore, the quotation marks around "reading" are annoying and give away the fact that the word is only a clumsy approximation of the manner of the presentation. In the following observations, I'll just refer to it as a performance.

Despite a few surly voices here and there, I thin there is little doubt that the performance of "John Brown's Body" is a notable dramatic success. The spirit and quality of Stephen Vincent Benet's epic poem of the Civil War are, I am told by those who have read it, faithfully captures, and, despite my failure to do my homework, I know that it is dramatically powerful and effective in the theater. It is moving and eloquent, it succeeds in bringing to the stage the breadth and sweep of both history and the epic, and it sings with exciting lyric fervor of the beauty of the American land and it is splendidly performed.

Tyrone Power

It probably isn't altogether flattering to Tyrone Power, and it is certainly indicative of the low estate in which Hollywood is held critically, that every one seemed surprised at the excellence of Mr. Power as one of the three performers. The important truth is, however, that that acclaim bestowed on the romantic screen star is by no means merely due to the astonishment aroused by his work. Even if we had all known in advance that he was an actor of resource and variety, New York would have been impressed by the fire, eloquence and sheer dramatic forcefulness of his stage equipment and, in particular, his stirring recreation of Pickett's famous charge.

Each of the three stars is allotted one important show-piece during the course of the evening and the Battle of Gettysburg is Mr. Power's private preserve. Naturally, the Lincoln sequences belong to Raymond Massey, and it is to his credit that he doesn't have to fall back on memories of his distinguished performance in "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." Playing as freshly as if he were approaching it for the first time, he makes a long soliloquy of the most lovable of American heroes a deeply moving experience. Judith Anderson, as a woman in childbirth, has the least effective Big Scene, but, as always, she plays with elemental and untamed power.

Master of Shaw As impressive and effective as it is, I believe it is true that "John Brown's Body" isn't as triumphant a theatrical event as last season's presentation of "Don Juan in Hell." There are several understandable reasons for this, and the most important is simple enough. That is, if you can call Bernard Shaw simple. The "Don Juan" episode from "Man and Superman" is the work of a great dramatist, who was writing directly for the stage. "John Brown's Body" is the work of a distinguished poet who was writing a narrative poem that was meant for reading. It must be distorted slightly for the stage, and the distortion, though minor, is noticeable.

Then there is that old law of diminishing returns, which seems to be stringently enforced in the theater. There is no longer present the value of absolute freshness that made the performance of the Shaw interlude so exciting. For a third reason, the use of a choral group, while splendidly managed, gives the dramatized poem a hint of pretentiousness that "Don Juan" avoided. "John Brown's Body" is so good, and Mr. Gregory, its sponsor has imagination and enterprise that are so important to the creative life of the theater, that I think it should be called to his attention that he and Mr. Laughton will find the future an interesting challenge.