Sam Abramovitch is Anne Nichols' new production, with a cast of almost 100. It tells of a Russian Jew, whose ideal is uplift of humanity, whom poverty drives to amass a fortune in the U. S., who later loses both fortune and a beloved son, thereupon re-dedicates himself to his original, unmercenary ideal of uplifting humanity. Just how the elevation is to be accomplished is not divulged, but the End of Ends is when "all men love one another like brothers.
The ridiculousness of Abie's Irish Rose is forsaken for the sublimity of saintliness. Therefore, the lines are written in blank verse, a special musical accompaniment is provided to exalt them still higher. Unfortunately, the play, weighted down by heavy-handed craftsmanship and uninspired poetry, ascends to nothing loftier than pompous platitudinousness. Specimen of the verse: "a magnificent flood of mothers' milk." Sam Abramovitch might as logically have been Hans Schneidewind but for the local box office.
The Barker was written by Kenyon Nicholson, young Columbia University professor of dramatic art. Paradoxically, it falls short of technical efficiency the while it achieves a glorious fullness of unacademic atmosphere, characterization and emotional conflict. In the play, all the tent-show folk—hula dancer, snake-charmer, clown, odd-job men — accept with varying humors their haphazard, futile nom-adism—all except the barker, "Nifty" Miller, soul and essence of the entire raucous flimflam. He, chained like the others to the aimless tent life, holds fast to the idea that his only son will one day be a wealthy, respectable lawyer in a stable community. But the ballyhoo beckons to the boy, also. He joins the circus one vacation, soon develops an aversion for "all them colleges" of his father's dreams and hopes, marries the snake-charmer, a maid of 20 summers, whose age "if ye go by experience is 120." Brokenhearted, disappointed by his son's "ingratitude," "Nifty" is on the point of deserting the show when he sees the substitute barker flopping about in a feeble exhortation before an unresponsive crowd. Then, like Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt of What Price Glory, "Nifty" rushes onto the platform to discharge a duty too near his heart to be abandoned even by galled ambition. Thereafter the ballyhoo goes on as before.