“Overtones”
Alice Gerstenberg, who dramatized Alice in Wonderland, wrote Overtones, evidently as an experiment, and had it produced in New York. Now it is crowding vaudeville houses. As an experiment only is it important. Cyril Harcourt intends collaborating with Miss Gerstenberg to produce a three-act play on the same lines: characters being followed by their “real selves”, veiled, with voices confused. A Shaw play might be done this way—it is a method effective for moralizing and bringing home a point. But why would Darling Dora need an overtone or an undertone; or Blanco Posnet or Fanny’s Father? If there is any reason for the dramatic presentation of characters at all it is the drama of themselves—their actions and their thoughts as opposed to those of others.... Imagine Rebecca West being followed through three acts by a “real self”; or Ulric Brendel—“... I am homesick for the mighty nothingness”.