“Lithuania”
Whoever hasn’t seen the Little Theatre’s production of Rupert Brooke’s Lithuania has missed an excellent although unimportant dramatic treat. It is the most “effective” thing of its kind I ever have seen executed in Chicago. It is one prolonged and unrelieved shudder from start to finish.
Rupert Brooke is the hero of the occasion. His play is the thing. The theme is that of the guest who stops over in an outlying peasant hut and is murdered in his chamber while he sleeps. Brooke added a flourish in making the guest a returned son of the house who vanished when he was thirteen. Taking this hackneyed idea Brooke moulded it with consummate skill. And the result is a study in horror and pathology, vivid, artistic and for its effect upon the audience to be compared only to the witnessing of a child birth. Three of its actors rose to its demands. Mrs. Browne as the lame daughter contributed practically all the human atmosphere there was. Miriam Kiper abetted her. Allan MacDougall, in the part of a half-witted son of a tavern keeper, added a few excellent moments. The other men were, however, entirely unsuccessful in their efforts. Maurice Browne, as the peasant father, failed with the rest of them to give the impression the play demanded, sullen, grim, virile, despondency. But it was there, despite them.