20–6980
An allegorical play of continuous action, altho arrangement is made for division into the usual five acts. The theme is Christianity, and among the characters are Mary Bliss, a woman of simple faith who grows steadily younger as the play progresses until she passes from age to radiant girlhood, and Tommy Trail, a revivalist of the Billy Sunday type, determined to save her soul. The others, with the exception of Dafty, also a symbolic figure, represent various types of worldliness.
Booklist 16:271 My ’20 Nation 110:435 Ap 3 ’20 260w
“Its spirit is beautiful and profoundly right. But its method is that of allegory gone mad, jumbling touches of realism with the maddest fantasy, so it is perplexing and ineffective even to read, and, in the theater, quite hopeless.” W. P. Eaton
− + N Y Call p10 Ap 18 ’20 520w
“There are greater achievements doubtless in the world of drama than Mr Charles Rann Kennedy’s ‘Army with banners’ but one doubts if there are greater exploits. It blends incongruities and actualizes fantasies in a manner that allows no rest and sets no bound to admiration. As a play it is far from exemplary. It is long and its action is naught, and the culmination has the effect of being prostrated by the fatigues of its journey.”
− + Review 2:400 Ap 17 ’20 380w
“In ‘The army with banners’ one finds an art so completely intellectual that one’s interest, trained to emotion and sentiment, falters at times: the high finish, brilliant and sustained as it is, is brittle almost to the cracking-point. Of plot—well, Mr Kennedy would never be passed by Professor Baker, and this reviewer has a suspicion that a bit of concession to story-interest would have helped over the two or three undeniably dull spots in the book.”
+ − Theatre Arts Magazine 4:255 Jl ’20 380w